


The Heat Seekers

by anarchyarmin



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Belarusian Mello, Binge Drinking, Blood Play, Bondage, Canon Universe, Dysfunctional Relationships, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Northern Irish Matt, Prostitution, Purgatory, Slow Burn, pro dom!Mello, switch!Mello
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-01-23 23:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12518876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchyarmin/pseuds/anarchyarmin
Summary: Mello had always seemed to Matt like a heat-seeking missile, bent on destruction, determined to burn out bright. When Matt begins to suspect that Mello's pursuit of Kira is a suicide mission, he tries to re-orient Mello's thinking to life after the chase, some kind of normal life together.  // A more-or-less canon compliant story that goes deeper into Matt & Mello's relationship and how Mello ended up writing a novel from behind the veil.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wished we'd had so much more of Matt & Mello in Death Note. Here's how I imagined filling in the gaps of their backstory together.

Mello slips the envelope of cash into his briefcase and shuts the door to the hotel room behind him. This was one of the stranger scenes he'd ever done. Not technically; Ito didn't require anything extravagant in terms of being tied up and flayed. But every scene Ito did required a narrative.

"I want to do a re-enactment," he said, his voice quavering slightly over the phone.

"You mean, like, something from history?" Mello's mind raced. He had all manner of military uniforms in the closet of his apartment, and a growing assortment of weapons, real and fake. But he always went with aesthetics over accuracy.

"No, something from my childhood, in Japan," Ito said. "Well. I want it to start out that way."

Which was how Mello found himself dressed as a librarian, correction-less glasses and all, standing under a vent pouring forth arctic air conditioning at the end of a long hotel corridor. Ito shelled out extra for the effort. Mello found a vintage suit based on a grainy photograph of Ito's from the 1960s. He spent an hour fast-forwarding through films to get the style of speech right. Mello never does this much for anyone. But this was not about money. He hadn't needed the money in a long time. And it wasn't reputation management, either; the only other thing that could prompt Mello to go out of his way was a threat to his status as the the best male professional dominant in Southern California. Mello harbored no such fear.

"He was the youngest of the staff as I recall," Ito said about the librarian. Mello sat patiently on the phone and pretended to give a shit. "Just finished with university," Ito said.

And the reason you knew you were into men, Mello thought.

"I got caught stealing a book from the library..." Ito said.

Which I'm sure you did on purpose, Mello thought, in order to see him, because simply going to the library wasn't enough.

"Well, the reason I thought of it, is that you remind me a little of him. It's in the voice, mostly. When you speak Japanese, you sound alike..."

Mello sank his face into his palm. For fuck's sake, he thought; I ought to bill for this time on the phone, too.

"In fact, even now, talking to you, it gives me chills..."

No, fuck that. I'm totally billing you for this.

But for Ito, it was worth it. Ito was an executive of one of the largest shipping and transport companies in Japan. Never married, deeply closeted, and depending on the day and the performance of his company, needed to be told he was either a good boy, or a very bad one. Ito paid a premium for the companions of his preference and to have his secrets kept. A regular, top-paying client for the last two years.

"You ought to come with me to Japan," he said on a number of occasions.

Not yet, Mello thought. But one day soon, I'll cash in all the favors. There's only so much information I can get from the West Coast. Rod's connections in Japan are not enough.

The inside of the hotel elevator is lined with spotless mirrors. Mello examines himself. You really can pull of anything, can't you, he thinks. His hair is slicked back neatly, and the glasses suit his face. But the cut of his vest and his tie call back to another era. A far cry from his normal leather get-up.

You look like an actor, Mello tells himself. Guess you already are one. What a rotten shame you can't be photographed. Aiko was right, you would have made an excellent model. You would have been the best at that, too.

But that was a path for some other life, some other world without mass killers hiding behind screens. Nothing else mattered but this. Kira.

The bank sign across the street from the gleaming hotel reads 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Autumn is the worst time to be in this city. Mello stands on the street corner in the blazing afternoon sun and lights a cigarette. A woman in a tight dress walking a black greyhound walks up to him.

"Got a light?" she asks.

Mello flicks open the gold butane lighter with his blackletter initial 'M' engraved on the side. He lights her cigarette and catches a whiff of clove.

She looks him up and down. "You're not dying in this heat, wearing that?"

"Work uniform," he says and takes a drag.

She laughs. "Really. And what do you do?"

Mello glances at her. "I'm a librarian in hell."

 

+

 

The heat rising up from the pavement warps the light, and the midday sun makes a blinding glare on Mello's vinyl pants. Mello sits down in a small wooden booth in the ramen shop and lays out a newspaper. His iced matcha and steaming bowl of noodles arrive without him having to say anything. He and Aiko had both been creatures of habit. They had always come here, and always ordered the same thing. By now the waiters understand. They don't ask what he wants. They don't ask about Aiko, either.

Mello's phone rings before he can tear the paper off his chopsticks. He squints at the caller ID. An unlisted number. "This is Mello," he says, his voice flat among the chatter of the restaurant.

"Mello, it's Halle."

He hasn't heard that voice since the funeral for L and Watari, the last time he saw anyone associated with Wammy's. Halle had introduced herself as Ryuzaki's former doubles tennis partner. Mello suspected, but couldn't confirm, that L was the reason Halle began working for the FBI. Halle made an eloquent case for why Mello should join her. Mello stuck to his plan and left anyway. He cut off all ties, and any possibility of funding from L or Watari's estates.

"Halle? Why are you calling me?" And how did you get this number? The thought makes his stomach turn with anger.

"You know why I'm calling you."

"Then you know what my answer is," Mello says. So it must be true, he thinks: Near joined up with the FBI after all. Well. I hope they enjoy babysitting.

"Mello--"

"I'm not working with Near. You know this."

"Then at least work with me," she says.

"What are you talking about?" Mello sneers.

"Are you still working alone?" Halle asks.

"Of course not." But Halle's question makes Mello pause. He has what he would consider assistants. Accomplices. But Rod and his cronies are one-sided, weak-minded people, no matter how good they are at hiding from the law. There's no one in their entourage that Mello would consider a peer. No one he doesn't secretly want to get rid of.

"I see."

"I'm not giving you any information," Mello says.

"I'm not asking you to," she says. "But I'd encourage you to keep your mind open to the possibility of a trade."

Mello scoffs. "Does Near know you contacted me?"

"No," Halle says. "He doesn't need to know. Mello," her voice is unsettlingly calm, "You know I don't care who solves this case. I care that it gets solved. If there's something you need to know, then I'll contact you again. You know what day tomorrow is, don't you?"

"Of course I fucking know what day it is." November 5th is the anniversary of L's death. "You need to stay in your lane," Mello says, "and leave me the fuck alone."

"I'll talk to you later, Mello," she says, unperturbed.

Mello slaps the phone shut against the table and dives into the ramen before it gets cold.

+

Mello's copy of _Yomiuri Shimbun_ stains his hands gray. There's only so much the newspapers can tell him, but it's better than nothing. And good to keep his finger on the pulse of public opinion.

Mello picks the meaning slowly from the characters, always better at speaking than reading. One story mentions the head of the Japanese police, who announced withdrawal from investigating Kira shortly before L died. So. He's putting pressure on the government to make an official statement in support of Kira. He's making public statements to law enforcement in other countries. These cowards will never cease to amaze me, Mello thinks; how these pathetic, cowering assholes get elected and promoted, I will never understand. Has Kira really become that influential? Mello doesn't want to believe it.

Possibilities form branches and chains in his mind. It must be blackmail, he thinks. Kira is within the Japanese police. Mello sees no other possibility. All signs, all of his research points to this. Mello stirs the matcha with his straw and drums his fingers against the table. The name Takimura sounds familiar.

Yes, Ito's business partner, Asahi, the contractor. He had bragged loudly about the opulent vacation home his company had built for director Takimura.

Takimura's someone I can reach. Swipe him out of the picture, force the Japanese police to move. Reveal the factions that remain, like stripping the bark of a tree to show the termites underneath. Mello scans his mental list of contacts. The scheme plays out in his mind. Yes, disable the security system. Or cut power to the neighborhood entirely. Pluck him out that way. Good. When Rod calls this afternoon, I know what to tell him. Make him feel useful.

"You want another tea?" the waiter asks.

Mello snaps out of his trance. "Uh...yes," he says. It's only then that he notices he's been sitting with his knees to his chest, his feet on the edge of the little bench.

+

Mello leaves the newspaper on the table with the check, and walks through the shopping center. Spray from the huge stone fountain in the center of the courtyard makes a rainbow. November 5th isn't just the anniversary of L's death. It will also mark exactly six months since Kira eliminated Aiko.

Mello assumed L would be the only person Kira could take from him, one of the only people who ever mattered to him. He believed this until Aiko dropped dead from a heart attack in the Borrego County Women's Detention Facility, one of twenty-six people to die from Kira that day.

Mello sits on a concrete bench across from the fountain, in the shade of a brilliant red maple, and remembers.

He sat hunched over his laptop, his knees to his chest, when Aiko snuck up behind him. She blew on the back of his neck and drizzled her long, painted fingernails down his back. Mello nearly kicked the computer off of the coffee table in shock and Aiko cackled with laughter.

"Mello, do you believe in shinigami?" Aiko wiggled her fingers and made a spooky, wide-eyed face.

"What the hell are you talking about," Mello said. He had heard of shinigami. When Mello was eight, L brought back a book of Japanese folktales from one of his many trips, along with copious, eccentric sweets, covered in labels that Mello couldn't yet read at the time.

"I swear to god, these Kira forums crack me up," Aiko said, nodding in the direction of her own open laptop, glowing in the low light. She pulled a bottle of wine from the cupboard and poured herself a glass. "There's all these threads about the 'gods of death,' people going off about all this this supernatural stuff." She sank down into the plush couch across from Mello, with no idea how much he already knew. On her night off, she lazed around her apartment in a long black satin dressing gown and yellow slippers.

Mello wasn't sure what to say. He had recovered transcripts, clips of footage of the man called the "Yotsuba Kira." There were ravings about giant monsters. Whether it was a code language, mental illness, deflection, or some other part of Kira's power, Mello didn't know.

"Hey Mel," she said. "What do you call a crackpot idea about Kira?"

He rolled his eyes. "What?"

"A cons-Kira-cy theory!" Aiko laughed hard at her own joke.

Mello gave her a few unenthusiastic claps. "That's...wow. You spend all this time improving your English, and this is what you give me?"

"But I have improved, right?" She flashed a devilish grin. If she was aiming to sound native, she was getting close.

"I'm so proud of you." He said it dryly, but they both knew he meant it.

Mello watches the water gush forth from the fountain and squints. His mental image of Kira is a nondescript Japanese man in a suit. Maybe with glasses. When you wrote her name down, Mello thinks, what script did you use? Aiko was from Fukuoka, but Mello could find no record of her death in the Japanese news, only in America. It was only on the fanatical Kira forums that Aiko found so funny that he found the kanji for her name, in a detailed list of victims compiled by Kira's rabid, idiotic fans. Mello wrote it down, the strokes awkward to his unfamiliar hand, so as not to forget it.

+

In London, Matt ignores the sunset. It's not until he hears the sound of his own stomach growling that he pauses the game on his computer to walk to the kitchen. He opens the door to the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of milk. He unscrews the cap, sniffs the contents, and takes a sip.

Matt spits sour milk all over the floor of the otherwise immaculate, barely used kitchen.

What did you expect, he thinks as he brushes his teeth. You haven't been in this flat for days.

Matt pushes a disinfectant wipe around the kitchen floor with his foot. He rubs his stinging eyes. Immersed in the world of the game, time passes so quickly. The rest of the world disappears. He prefers it that way.

He picks up his phone and summons Chinese takeout. He stands at the kitchen window and observes the noisy street below, everything bathed in garish orange light.

He's been putting off answering emails for several days. Why he decided to take a last minute trip to Belfast, he couldn't really say. Something about being finished at Wammy's forever made him want to go back and see the place where they found him. Matt sometimes wondered what would have happened, what his life would have been like, if the old man in the bowler hat and the young man with wild dark eyes had never showed up that day.

"You were lucky," Linda said. "They put me on a train from Cardiff by myself, and when I met Ryuzaki at the station, I'd never been so scared in my life."

"You can call him 'L' now, you know," Matt said.

"I know, but I don't think I'll ever get used to it."

Several times a year, L came back to visit Wammy's. But it wasn't until the kids in Matt's cohort were 12 or 13 that Watari told them who Ryuzaki really was. Matt didn't understand why Linda was frightened at first. The others all instantly gravitated to L. Who wouldn't like the grown up who was basically a giant child, who always brought all kinds of chocolates, and unusual books in different languages? Who would stay up all night telling stories in a blanket fort? Who was smarter than all of the other adults and seemed to listen to none of them?

L. Tomorrow it'll be four years, Matt thinks. Matt touches his forehead to the window glass and feels cold. In his email inbox are offers from representatives from the FBI, the CIA, the British Secret Service, and Kreuz, the notorious private security firm based out of Zurich. Matt knows he needs to answer them, and make a decision. On the coffee table is a brochure addressed to his most recent alias, Mattias Jensen, announcing a new program at King's College London: Game Design and Virtual Environments.

They trained me to be just like you, L, Matt thinks. They taught me German, Japanese, and Russian. Deduction, mediation, conflict resolution, persuasion techniques, strategy. Every rhetorical and analytical skill they thought I could have needed. So what now?

The money from Watari's estate was generous, but it was given to the Wammy's alumni on the condition that they make some kind of progress, some contribution to L's legacy.

Nothing, Matt realized, could have prepared him for this. The feeling of paralysis and emptiness. The feeling that none of it matters. Drinking sour milk alone in a rented flat and mourning.

For a moment, Matt feels a surge of jealousy toward Linda. You knew you weren't cut out for it, he thinks. You knew when you needed to switch tracks. You never wanted to be a detective. And you had the guts to say it.

On the train back from Belfast, Matt resented being given no say in life, being brought to this institution and expected to perform. But it hadn't really gone that way, had it? You could have left, like Mello did, Matt thinks. You could have struck out and done your own thing, like Linda. Even Olga had said 'to hell with people' and put all her focus on computers, the thing that suited her best.

There was no official requirement that the kids at Wammy's train to follow L. But there was the tacit understanding that if you were chosen to be there, it was because you had potential. If you weren't going to use that potential to be a detective, then you'd better put it toward something. No wonder Linda painted up a storm. She left a year before Matt, already represented by galleries across Europe. Matt looks around the flat. It's so empty here still. A piece of artwork wouldn't be the worst thing.

Matt sits back down at his computer and tentatively opens his email. He expects the message at the top of the list to be from Olga, telling him again to come work with her at Kreuz. Instead it's a forwarded message, first in Japanese, then English.

 _Opening next week at Tokyo's Gallery 119: Linda Quill:_ Transformation.

Matt's face peels into a smile. Linda's note follows the graphic of the exhibition poster.

_I didn't know where you were living these days, I wanted to mail you the invitation! I know Japan is far away, but I had to at least invite you. Hope you're doing ok Matty. It's been too long, let's catch up soon._  
_xx Linda_

You gave me too much credit, Linda, Matt thinks.

The day she left she threw her arms around him and said if it hadn't been for him, she would have given up when they were kids. Matt had virtually forgotten the day she ran into the room crying because Near told her she wasn't good at drawing. Matt frowned and said Near wasn't good at drawing either, and unless he practiced every day, he never would be. It was enough to set things straight, in Linda's mind. If you only accomplished one good thing in life, Matt tells himself, at least you were a good influence on someone.

Matt wonders what Japan is like this time of year. How long does the exhibition run? He clicks through the images on the gallery's website. Birds and other animals, dying and dead things, saints and gods and other religious figures fill the huge, exuberant canvases. An unexpected thought strikes him. The paintings seem like something Mello would like.

+

Keeping chocolate from melting in this insane heat is no joke to Mello. But it's better than letting it freeze. Mello prefers the heat. He would rather wear his leather, fur, and vinyl in the California sun than in the constant, miserable fog of England.

Mello steps back into the courtyard with a plastic bag of Meiji chocolate bars from the grocery store at the edge of the complex. The chocolate is good, but unremarkable. Mello buys it because it was what L used to buy them.

Aiko noticed this. Each time Mello came to her apartment for a "lesson," as she called it, she made a point of leaving the chocolate visible on the table.

"You always do that," Mello said. He stood naked in front of her floor-to-ceiling mirror as she unwound a coil of red silk rope.

"I pay attention to detail," she said. "You'll never get good at this kind of thing if you don't."

If only you knew, Mello thought, how much training I have had in paying attention to detail. He saw no point in telling her. The less she knew, he thought, the safer she'd be. It was bad enough to need her help. He felt no need to explain why.

Aiko explained the steps of her rope creation, the knots and twists to create the harness around Mello's body, more complex than the previous ones. Aiko kept herself in peak condition; reaching thirty, she looked closer to eighteen. Mello felt no arousal looking at her. It was an aesthetic response, the way one might feel looking at an elegant wild animal or a beautiful painting. But it had no effect on his body. Not like the bite of the rope or the pressure of the cuffs; the heat of the wax, the sting of the whip or the flail...

"It's all right if you like it, you know," Aiko said, noticing the flush on Mello's face and chest, his growing erection. "In fact, it's probably better if you do. You have a sense of what it's like for your clients, what they like about it."

Mello didn't give a shit what it felt like to his clients. He cared about who they knew, what they knew, how much they could pay, and how much it would take to control them, whether through seduction, or blackmail, or both.

"Your turn." Aiko finished untying him. Mello glanced down at the piles of rope on the floor and began to loop them around his arm. "I'll give you a hint," she said. "Act like you know exactly what you're doing, even if you don't. It's the confidence people want to see."

But that was easier said than done. Mello growled with frustration each time he had to fix a mistake or start over. Aiko smiled, amused at his impatience and the lopsided harness emerging on her body.

"I'm going to guess, you were never a boy scout," she said.

Mello glared at her. "Yeah, you know, I never did get my Shitty Human Macrame badge." He pulled the ropes a little lighter, and she laughed.

"I'll tell you something else," she said, once the rope harness was complete. "There's really only one skill you need to know, and everything else is just details. If you want to make yourself indispensable, and have people coming back to you over and over, you have to figure out what people need. Not what they say they need, or say they want, or even what they think they need, but what they actually need. And then, you have to be the one person who can give them that."

Mello wondered what it was she thought he needed. What was she doing besides buying chocolate that made her apartment feel like home? What was watering that feeling of fraternal devotion that kept building each time he saw her? Part of him was afraid of what she might have said. But looking back on it now, he wishes he had asked her.

+

One thing was clear. Ito needed stories. Elaborate escapes from the pressure and disappointment of his life. Each scene was another space he could retreat to. Which was fine, Mello thought with a disdainful smirk on his face, if your goal was to run away from your life instead of facing it head on.

Ito wanted to try blood play, he said. He had done it before with another dom, but it had been several years ago. He wanted to see what Mello would come up with.

I don't need this bullshit to deal with right now, Mello thinks as he walks past a gift shop by the courtyard. But Ito is a key to Takimura. And a ticket abroad without documents, if the time comes.

Lucky cats wave at Mello through the window. Colorful fish flags hang from the ceiling. L had brought one back for each of the kids in his cohort from another Japan trip. Or had he? Two red fish flags hung in the little bedroom Mello shared with Matt. Had L really picked them out just for the two of them? Mello assumed he'd gotten them for everyone. Olga got a stack of gilded origami paper for her fascination with geometry. For Linda, bamboo brushes and ink sticks. For Mello and Matt, the flags, and books, and chocolate.

Mello scans the window of the shop when something else catches his eye. Little straw dolls, wara ningyo, stand in a neat row in a corner of a shelf. Of all the stories L had told him, it was the BB murders that captivated Mello the most. Mello always thought it would have made a fascinating novel, or even a film. If Mello weren't so fixated on Kira, he'd think to perhaps sit down and write the book himself. But it had been so long since he'd written anything. Not since before he left Wammy's, not since before L passed.

I could have written down every story you told me, Mello thinks. I can't even read a fucking mystery novel at the airport because they're all so stupid and predictable compared to the kinds of things you used to tell us. It's not fair, Mello thinks. You should have had decades' more stories to tell us. You should be here. They should have trained us to be your assistants, not your replacements. Nobody should have had to replace you so soon. But now I have to do it. And I'll do whatever I have to. I don't care about taking on some stupid client. I could whip Rod Ross until he bleeds to death if it would get me closer to Kira. I'm the best actor in this entire fucking city, and there's not a headshot of me anywhere.

Mello buys two of the wara ningyo for his next scene with Ito. Ito doesn't deserve such a fancy setup, but Mello knows he'll love it. One of BB's victims had been Japanese-American, with a cryptic message carved into his body. Mello can draw Roman numerals with his scalpel on Ito's skin, shallow enough not to scar.

He pulls one of the dolls from the bag and turns the little figure over in his hand as he walks to the parking lot. The dolls were a critical detail that L missed. L solved his case, but only because of the agent Naomi Misora.

If the world's greatest detective can have an assistant, then so can I, Mello thinks. L won because he chose correctly. He chose someone who could keep up with him.

Mello steps onto the infernal pavement, liquid in the rippling heat, and unlocks his car. He puts the chocolate in his lap to keep it from touching the searing leather seats.

Near is getting warmer, and I am running out of time, Mello thinks. I need a Misora. I need someone outside Ross's circles who can be my eyes when I'm not around. Fine. If I'm going to get revenge for L, then I'll do things the way he did, and choose a partner.

Only one person comes to mind.


	2. Chapter 2

In London, the sun has vanished, and the flat is dark except for the light from Matt's computer and the pale yellow glow from the street. Empty takeout boxes sit next to him at the long table he's made into his desk. On the screen is a list of fares for flights to Japan. Maybe I will go see Linda in Tokyo, Matt thinks. It's not like I've been asked to go work on the Kira case. And I haven't been there since we were kids, the year Watari took us. 

It was about this time of year and the leaves were turning. Matt overheard Watari tell their other chaperone, Eva, how remarkable it was that L, a man with no table manners of his own, had taught Matt's cohort not only Japanese, but the basic social graces. The adults around them were all delighted at how well-behaved and well-spoken the little brood of foreign children was. It wasn't until they were out of earshot that the complaints would begin.

"When are we going to the toy store?" Near tugged at Eva's sleeve. 

"Why didn't Ryuzaki come with us?" Nine-year-old Olga pouted and stamped her feet.

"Is he coming to meet us?" Dana asked.

"Can we get ice cream?" Linda looked up at Watari.

"I don't want to hold Near's hand!" Mello shouted and slapped it away.

"Mello, why not?" Eva asked, still new to Wammy's, and unfamiliar with the constellations of grudges. "You'll get separated. You hold Matt's hand all the time--"

"That's because Matt's my friend and Near's not!" Mello stuck his tongue out at oblivious Near, who was distracted by the cityscape around them, hunting for the kanji for "toy shop." As if to prove a point to Eva, Mello held Matt's hand for most of the trip. Matt hadn't minded. He liked the feeling of being chosen, sought out, superior. 

Matt cracks his knuckles above his head and stretches. He's positive he hasn't held another person's hand since. Near is already in America, Matt thinks. I wonder how he's doing. Can they stand to put up with him? Matt leans back in his chair. If Near didn't have an intellect touching on L's, would anyone bother to put up with his strange set of habits? 

Matt lights another cigarette. His silver butane lighter has his initial engraved on it. Roger would kill him if he found out Matt began smoking, but Roger doesn't have any authority over that kind of thing anymore. Near's in New York, Olga's in Zurich, Dana's in Geneva, Linda's in Tokyo, and I'm doing fuck-all in London until I get my act together, Matt thinks. And Mello. Where on Earth did you wind up? 

Mello remains frozen in Matt's mind the way he looked on the verge of 16, at the funeral for L and Watari. Two days prior, Mello packed a single suitcase and moved into a hostel in the neighboring town, without saying a word to anyone. Matt tried to find him after the service, but he had already disappeared. 

Matt takes a long drag. Mello. I thought we were friends. I don't blame you for wanting to leave. But why didn't you tell me? Didn't you use to say I was the only person you trusted to keep a secret? 

Matt convinced himself it was stupid. If Mello left without saying goodbye, then Matt had nothing more to say to him but good luck. Matt was fourteen, and unsure yet whether he liked women, men, both, or neither at all. He had no word for what it felt like to be around Mello then. He pushed it out of his mind. He made up more games, did language drills with Linda and Dana until he was effortlessly fluent, made Olga teach him all of her hacking skills. 

Matt taps his cigarette over his silver ashtray. He knew it was a fool's errand to try to look Mello up. Mello would try to make himself untraceable, invisible until the moment he won. The only search results for 'Mello' that seemed remotely plausible were a set of Craigslist and Backpage ads for a prostitute in LA, pointing to a simple website. The young man had blonde hair that reached his shoulders, but of course, there were no photos of his face. It had to be a coincidence, Matt thought. He had felt uneasy looking at the listings. It was one thing to scroll through looking at porn. But those people were imaginary and distant and ceased to exist once Matt closed his browser. Not a real person, with a phone number, a history, a life. 

Besides, Matt thought, there was no reason for Mello to keep his former handle. Matt half-expected to see an alias of Mello's crop up in the news, some variant of M.K., like he had always used. Which was more likely to happen? A mugshot of Mello with a name like Michael Kellett or Mikael Kane underneath it on the news? Or would Matt pick up a crime novel by Mischa Khiel at Heathrow and detect the same style and voice he'd read so many years ago? Near made card houses, Linda doodled endlessly, Matt made up games, and Mello would write stories. Matt wonders if Mello has picked up a pen since the last day they saw each other. 

Matt looked Mello up again a year later. Still nothing. But this time the sex worker's website had gotten an upgrade, and the faceless man wore fantastical military uniforms and vinyl pants. There was now a list of elaborate services, and the website was translated into German, Japanese, and Russian. Matt cringed at the style of the writing, not because it was bad, but because it felt familiar. He could trace no owner, no IP addresses or service providers. Whoever had made the website had covered their tracks exceptionally well. 

It can't be him, Matt thought. Surely Mello would have gotten by some other way. Hacking, blackmail, theft, something. Unless doing something like this got him information. Or unless he simply enjoyed it. 

Matt hunches over the desk, the end of his cigarette red against the blue screen. He can count on one hand the number of times he's gotten laid. A few awkward, sloppy encounters with women, a few with men. His porn searches lately had mostly been for men. The thought of Mello being a professional makes him anxious. No, it can't be him.

"Try not to think about it," Olga said over the top of her laptop screen. The topic of Mello came up again a few months before they left. "He's practically your brother, so you know it never would have worked out."

Matt squinted. "Wait, so you consider me a brother?"

"Hm? Oh." Olga crossed her arms. "Well, no, actually. I don't. I just said that to make you feel better about Mello."

Matt sank down in his seat.

"Oh, come on, Matt. Unless he's had some vision and gone off and joined a monastery, Mello's as crazy as he is selfish. You haven't seen him in ages, don't get nostalgic."

Matt hated that Olga was probably right. 

Selfish is what Mello had been. It was selfish to run off and disappear. I never got to tell you how I felt about you. I never got to find out for myself.

+

Rod Ross sits at one end of his red leather couch, Mello at the other. Mello can't say exactly why they always keep their distance afterward, as if not wanting any potential onlooker to make the mistake of thinking the two men are friends. Mello lights Ross's cigarette, then his own. The lighter was a gift from Ross. The exterior of the case is 18 karat gold. 

Lurid welts cover Ross's back, but only in areas a short-sleeved shirt can conceal, as per their long-standing agreement. In this heat, Ross doesn't want to make an effort to cover the marks he pays Mello to leave on his body. Mello's hair is damp with sweat, his officer's coat and dress shirt unbuttoned. His tall boots gleam in the low light. 

"What's this target's name again?" Ross's voice is gravely and low.

"Takimura," Mello says. "I need his phone tapped."

Ross nods slowly. "I'll get Satoh on it."

Mello has information on Takimura through Ito and Asahi. Asahi's company was easy enough to hack. But it'll have to be one of Ross's contacts that actually conducts the capture. How disgusting, Mello thinks, to have to wait on other people. Too many links in the chain when other people are involved. Too many ways someone else can fuck things up. If Ross hadn't ceded total control to Mello, the whole operation would be unbearable. He looks at Ross. The man looks like a human pitbull, muscular and dense. Mello feels like a child next to him, but that was part of the appeal, part of his niche. Mash up the tropes and the fantasies. Be the twink with a whip. 

Mello sat in the hotel bar waiting for a client when he overheard two people talking about him. They were speaking Japanese, one natively, one with an American accent. Mello turned around and spotted a Japanese woman in an ornate black lace dress talking to a tall black drag queen with a shaved head and glitter-covered eyelids. 

"This is at least the fifth or sixth time I've seen him here," Aiko said. She sipped her drink, finished for the day. "The first time I assumed it was for the auditions. You know, one of those crappy little modeling agencies, who knows if it's the real thing or not. Then he kept showing up." She grinned. "I saw one of his ads the other day." 

The queen chuckled and touched his finger to his lip. "I can see why he's popular. You think he ever tried to be a model?"

"Hard to say. You'd think he would have made it," Aiko said. "I mean, I would have cast him."

"Well, I suppose this pays better in the beginning anyway."

Mello fumed and turned around again. He scowled at them. "I can hear everything you're saying, you know that?" The last person he had spoken Japanese to who wasn't a client was L. 

Aiko let out a sharp little cackle. "I see." She folded her hands together. "The businessmen here must love you." 

The queen flicked open his lace fan. "So feisty. It's adorable."

Mello went red in the face with the two others laughing at him. Yeah, he thought, the maggots in suits here adore me. And they're a fucking goldmine. If you knew how much information I'm already getting out of them...

Aiko walked over from the bar and draped her arm around Mello's shoulders. "I've seen your listings," she said with a mischievous smile. "I'm sure you must be very busy. But you could make a lot more money if you knew how to top."

And so Aiko's lessons began. That had been three years ago. 

"I have a fabulous new client for you," Aiko said on the phone one day. Mello knew who Ross was before Aiko introduced him. He didn't tell either of them this, and let Ross believe he was an ordinary client at first. 

Mello worked out his negotiation with Ross, which types of instruments Mello would use, how much marking, and where; meeting times and access codes and safe words. Mello thought hard about Aiko's words. His strategy became clear. Mello looked Ross straight in the face; an imposing, brutal looking man. You, Mello thought, need someone who isn't remotely afraid of you. You snap your fingers and people bend over backwards to do what you want. It's been like this as long as you can remember, probably since you were a teenager. You need someone who makes you feel powerless for once. 

The first session had gone well. Ross immediately scheduled another. Mello waited until he got to his car before he started laughing. 

+

"Why are you teaching me all this?" Mello asked Aiko one afternoon.

"Because I was bored," she said as she opened her armoire of tools and toys. "And you looked like you were bored, too."

Mello hadn't wanted to admit she had a point. 

"It's kind of fun, you know," she said. "Teaching you, I mean."

"I'm surprised you have the patience for it," Mello said. He took his clothes off; a sleeveless mesh shirt and a pair of leather pants from the same shop where Aiko bought most of her dresses. 

She smiled wickedly again. "Well, you might have noticed...I do enjoy feeling like a master."

Mello rolled his eyes.

"Lie down," she said. 

Mello lay stretched out on his back on Aiko's bed, blindfolded, with his wrists and ankles tied to the four posts and a towel underneath him. Mello was embarrassed by the towel. But the whole point of the techniques was to get a client off. If Mello came only from Aiko's methods of binding and striking him, and not out of any interest in Aiko herself, then it spoke to the techniques' power. And that, after all, was what he was trying to learn. 

"It's difficult, isn't it?" She asked.

"What?"

"Relaxing, getting into it," she said.

"Maybe," Mello said. "It's not with you, though."

"Why is that?" Aiko asked him. She hunted through her armoire for a flogger. 

"I don't know."

"No, answer the question. It's important."

Mello had to think about it for a moment.

"Is there anyone else that you would do this with?" Aiko asked. "Besides me?"

"What?" Mello pulled against the ropes, then relaxed. "No," he said after a moment. "There isn't."

"Why is that?"

Mello groaned. "I don't know. There just isn't. Why would there be."

"How old are you?" Aiko stood by the side of the bed.

"Seventeen," Mello lied, a year off. 

"Have you ever been on a date, Mello?"

Mello grumbled. She couldn't have waited to tie him up until after they'd had this conversation? This woman did enjoy being cruel. "I don't have time for that kind of thing," he said. In a sense, it was true. And the closest thing he'd had to a date was being dragged out for ramen by Aiko. He hadn't counted his paid encounters with previous clients as dates. 

"You know, for some people, doing this kind of thing is a piece of cake. Hiring a domme, I mean. And going on a date is the scariest thing in the world. And some people can chatter on all day with anyone, but could never do something like this in a million years."

Mello felt the mattress move under the weight of Aiko's body. 

"Why do you think that is?" Aiko asked. "That either of those things is easy?"

Mello turned his head away from her. "I thought you were saving psychological torture for next week."

Aiko laughed and straddled him. "Mello. Just answer the question."

"For fuck's sake, Aiko. I don't know. This is easy with you because I trust you. Ok?"

She ran her finger down his neck and it made him shiver. "Good answer," she said. "Why?"

"Aiko. I don't know--"

She took his chin in her thumb and forefinger. "Don't ignore me, Mello. Answer the question." 

"I have to think about it," he said. 

She planted her hand at the base of his neck and pressed his body more firmly into the mattress. An authorized touch.

Mello's breathing got heavier. "I guess...I don't know. You have nothing to gain...from hurting me. And I've never...seen you do anything...you said you wouldn't do."

Aiko gripped a handful of Mello's hair and he gritted his teeth.

"You've never given me...any reason...not to trust you."

Aiko released him. "This is your homework for after you're done here this week," she whispered in his ear. "I want you to keep thinking about why you trust me, why you trust anyone, and why anyone would ever trust you."

Mello nodded, starting to perspire. 

"Are you ready?"

"Yes," he whispered. She struck his side with the flogger and his body went rigid.

In Mello's mind, there were two kinds of fear. Delicious fear, and toxic fear. And the former was often a brilliant antidote for the latter.

Being bound brought on a wave of delicious fear. So did things like roller coasters, or haunted houses, or horror movies; things Mello would never openly admit he liked. People love to be afraid, Mello thought as Aiko landed another blow. Pain bloomed across his body and the surge of adrenaline was decadent. They love to be afraid in small, controlled doses. When someone they trust is pulling the strings, pressing the buttons, running the show. At the end of the scene Mello felt like putty in Aiko's hands. 

"Mel," she told him, as he lay panting and covered in sweat, "don't be ashamed of liking things that other people will pay hundreds of dollars for."

That's one reason, he thought, why I trust you. You don't make me feel ashamed of anything.

"It makes you powerful," she said, "being able to give people what they want."

+

In Ross's apartment, Mello helps himself to a drink. He pours himself a glass of cognac from a cut crystal bottle on the bar. "You want anything?" he asks Ross.

Thick tendrils of smoke curl upward from Ross's nostrils. "Yeah. Pour me a glass."

Mello looks at the deep red marks on Ross's back. He always did relish it, the feeling of power. It means a lot to be trusted. It almost makes you feel like a god. Mello hardly trusts anyone. He trusted L, but L is gone. He trusted Watari, up to a point. He trusted Magda, from the orphanage in Minsk. He trusted Aiko. He trusted Matt. 

Mello hands Ross his drink and sits back down. 

I am the bringer of delicious fear, Mello told himself. And you will do nearly anything for it, won't you? Ross was the heaviest masochist Mello had ever met. The man's need for pain was insatiable. And his tolerance for it was something to be admired. Not openly. That would ruin the dynamic. 

Mello poured every ounce of his anger into Ross. The man was a beast, who wanted his limits pushed, and tested Mello every session. 

"I want your help with something," Mello told Ross a year prior, as he cleaned the cuts in Ross's back with alcohol.

"Yeah, and what's that?" Ross asked, coming back into normal consciousness. Mello had never once asked him for a favor.

"I'm looking for Kira," Mello said.

Ross laughed. "The hell are you talking about."

"That's why I came to this country," Mello said plainly.

Another roar of laughter from Ross. "You're looking for Kira in Southern California."

"No, in Japan," Mello said. "But this is an easier base of operations. Most of my clients are from Japan."

Ross turned around, realizing Mello wasn't kidding. "The hell are you trying to find Kira for?" 

"Because he killed L," Mello said. 

Ross stared at him as if he had two heads.

"The man they call L now is an impostor," Mello said. 

"Uh-huh. Sure. And how would you know that?"

"Because I knew L."

Ross laughed again, disdainfully this time. "Did you, now. I'd like to see you prove it."

Mello turned slowly to look at Ross. "How much time and money have you spent in the last five years to keep your name and face from getting leaked to the media?"

Ross crossed his arms.

"You don't want to answer, do you," Mello said.

Ross cocked an eyebrow.

"But it was a lot," Mello said. "You don't want Kira to find you. You have a lot to hide, don't you, Dwhite?"

Ross sat stock still. 

"And so does that nasty little rat that works for you, Kal Snydar. And your buddy Alan Meem, and Ralph Bay--"

"How the hell did you get those names." Ross's voice was quiet and grave.

"I told you, I knew L." Mello retained complete composure.

A look of genuine panic crept its way onto Ross's face. Then he scowled. "You really think you can find Kira?"

"Of course I do," Mello says. "I found you and your inner circle, and you've been hiding from Kira for years." Mello threw the gauze in the trash and walked to the sink to wash his hands. He was pleased with how the night was going. He'd already had Ross eating from the palm of his hand as a normal client. But this was the territory of toxic fear now. Mello had struck the deepest vein of it. "I'm not afraid of Kira," he said.

"Any why not?"

"Because I knew L," Mello said, "and L made it impossible to find me." Mello sat back down across from Ross. "I'm not afraid of Kira, I hate him. Every time I come to this apartment to do a scene with you, I imagine it's not you I'm hitting, but Kira, and this is the last thing I do before I kill you." Mello's eyes narrowed. "You would do anything to get rid of him, wouldn't you. Get rid of the one last thorn in your side."

Ross simply sat and looked at him.

"So. Are you going to help me or not?" Mello asked.

He reached out his hand and Ross shook it. 

 

+

 

Matt's phone rings and it makes him flinch. He looks at the caller ID. A US number, with a Los Angeles area code. The tiny screen reads 'Mikhail Kirill.' Another M.K.

You did this on purpose, didn't you, Matt thinks. You want me to know it's you, don't you? Otherwise you would have used an unlisted number. 

Matt feels his pulse quicken and he answers the call.

"Hello?" His throat is dry, his voice weak.

"Matt, it's me." The voice is like hearing a ghost, someone resurrected from the dead. "I want your help with something."

Matt reaches for his keyboard. He changes the search query from flights to Tokyo to flights to Los Angeles.


	3. Chapter 3

_British Airways 744 LHR to LGA_   
_Continental Airlines 1113 LGA to LAX_   
_I go through customs in New York and get in to LA at 3:20 pm_

Matt hits 'send,' and feels his pulse in his hand gripping his phone. His chest clenches when his phone buzzes with Mello's response.

_I'll meet you at the airport_   
_If anything comes up let me know_

Matt looks at the little screen for a moment. Is this all? Matt supposes it must be; nothing more to say until he arrives, until Mello briefs him on his work from the last four years.

Four years.

Matt cringes at the thought that he should have gotten that phone call years ago. He sets the phone on the night table next to him and draws his knees to his chest.

In the archive of his mind, there are a million different versions of how the story goes: when Matt catches up to Mello after the funeral and follows him. When Mello comes to get him. When Mello leaves an elaborate trail of clues that only Matt will understand, the way B did for L. But it's not a challenge, it's an invitation: if you can find me, you can join me.

Matt lies back on the bed and looks at the ceiling, his thoughts spin. Mello, did you want for us to find you? Did you want for us to look for you? You were so furious when you left.

Matt barely caught a glimpse of Mello at the service for L; a little pale phantom with his hood pulled up, hiding among the flocks of suited dignitaries. Mello's face was dry, but his eyes were a telltale red, and for that instant, the flush made his irises look bluer.

Matt could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Mello cry. The first time, six year old Mello dived into Matt's bed during the first thunderstorm of the summer, and Matt found himself explaining the phenomenon of lightning to the the jumpy, paranoid boy with the Russian-sounding accent.

"I don't like bright flashes," Mello said. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Matt's battery-powered lantern lit up the space underneath the blanket. "You mean you don't like the light?"

Mello nodded.

"Most people don't like the thunder. The sound," Matt said. "Why does the light bother you?"

"It's what happens when they take you away," Mello said. "In the place I used to live. They take your picture. You see a bright flash and then they take you somewhere else and you don't come back."

"Did Ryuzaki and Watari take your picture when they came to get you?" Matt asked.

Mello shook his head.

Matt stretches out, his back is stiff from sitting hunched over his computer. Did the flashes bother you when you had those promotional photos taken, Matt wonders? I suppose if you can't show your face, it's ok if you close your eyes. Maybe you have some elaborate mask you wear.

That's ridiculous, Matt tells himself. There's no way to know those photos are even of him.

But Matt can't stop his brain from transplanting Mello's head onto the vinyl-clad man's body. Well, Matt thinks, you always did wear black every single day I knew you.

Matt grips a handful of sheets. There was a time when I would have given anything to see you again. I would have done anything to have a picture of you. They made Linda throw away the best portrait she ever did of you and it made her cry, and I wanted to cry, too. I almost asked her to draw me a picture of you from memory, but I couldn't do it.

Matt gets up and walks to the kitchen. He pulls a beer from the refrigerator and pops off the cap.

Maybe it's better this way, that you disappeared entirely. If there's one thing I'm not going to do, it's sit up all night wondering what you look like now.

Matt pulls his game boy from the night stand and switches it on. He mashes the buttons furiously until his eyes refuse to stay open.

+

"What are you, a pelican?" Aiko asked Mello the first time she saw him sitting in L's trademark crouch.

"Shut up, it helps me concentrate," he said.

But there's no one to tell to shut up anymore. And the absence is distracting. Mello never told Aiko anything about Kira. She knew he was looking for something, but she never asked what. What if I had told her, Mello wonders. What if I had told her, and she had waited even fifteen minutes before she left that day, before those men got to her. How would the butterfly effect have spiraled out?

That's enough. Mello runs his hand through his hair. I don't need any more distractions.

Mello grits his teeth and reads through Takimura's cracked email account. He sits with his feet on the edge of his chair in the back of a UCLA library, courtesy of an ID card he swiped off a drunk student stumbling home. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead.

Mello scans through the day's Kira kill list. Heavy on Eastern Europe this time. But the names were released in their local languages days before. You're a lazy fucker, Kira, if you can't read anything in Cyrillic, Mello thinks.

Every building in this city feels like a meat freezer. Mello zips up his jacket. The white fringe of his hood blocks out any distractions in the room around him. But the ones in his head are still fair game.

Mello catches a whiff of cigarette smoke.

"Is someone sitting here?"

Mello looks up at the young woman in front of him and flinches. Her bright red hair is cut short, her face covered in dark freckles.

"No," he says.

The woman sits down across from him, and Mello notices the front of her book. _Folklore and Theology in Renaissance Europe_. A horned figure in a long cloak standing under a twisted apple tree adorns the cover. Mello squints.

In the book of folktales L brought him, there were illustrations of tall, hawkish figures, leaning over their trembling human counterparts. Grotesque characters with wild feathers like giant crows, or long limbs made of only bones, or piles of gaudy-looking jewelry. Gods of death. What a luxury to blame what you don't understand on demons, Mello thinks. A crutch for the superstitious and dumb.

Mello holds the charm of the rosary around his wrist between his thumb and forefinger and feels the shape of the little twisted metal body on its cross. Humans are cruel. Why wouldn't gods be? The creepy figures from L's book seem way more plausible to Mello than some glowing saint. If gods are real, they must be worse than we are. Crass, spiteful creatures who find the whole drama of human suffering amusing.

Would it be better or worse for gods and saints to be real, Mello wonders. Would it mean you weren't alone? Or would it mean you were being watched, being judged, every moment?

Stop. That's enough. Quit getting distracted. There's work to do.

"What's this?" Matt reached in the drawer of the table next to Mello's bed and pulled out a small figurine of Mary Madgalene.

"It's nothing," Mello said. He had waited around in the tiny cathedral gift shop while the others clamored around Watari for ice cream.

"Marie de Magdala," Matt read the tiny engraved type along the base of the figure. "Wasn't the woman who took care of you in Minsk named Magda?"

Mello felt his face flush. "Matt, it's nothing. Put it back."

"Sorry," Matt said. He shut the drawer.

Mello chews on the back of his pen. The little figurine lies in a drawer in Mello's apartment, next to the gun that Mello bought for Matt. Matt arrives in less than 24 hours. You were so quick to join me, he thinks. It's been a long time, Matt.

Mello tries to imagine Matt's face, what effect the last four years has had.

Knock it off. You hired Matt to help you, you don't need another distraction. Once all this is done, once Kira is gone and the governments of the world call on M instead of L, then you can tie up loose ends. Then you can worry about Matt.

On thing's for sure, though, Mello thinks. Aiko would have given me a hard time about you.

+

The sleeping pill hasn't quite worn off when the voice over the intercom announces the descent into New York. Matt peels his eyes open. Early morning light shines on the water, and Matt can discern the skyline in the distance. He likes New York. Once all this is done, it'd be nice to come back for a while.

L took them, when their cohort was all twelve, before they knew who exactly who he was. Mello, bored at a Yankees game, threw peanut shells at the backs of people's heads. When they turned around, he looked completely innocent. The thought makes Matt crack a smile. But his body feels like lead, fighting off the chemical sleep.

Matt pulls his backpack from the overhead compartment and shuffles into the airport. In the bathroom mirror, his eyes look dry and bloodshot above two little purple crescents. Maybe it'll be gone by the time I get to LA, Matt thinks. Then he frowns. Why do you even care about what you look like? What makes you think Mello's going to care?

The man at the customs desk has a shaved head and a neck like a tree trunk. He flicks open Matt's passport. The kids at Wammy's were protected by the same set of alias laws that applied to secret service agents. The name is fake, but the passport is real.

"Mister Jensen," the man says. "What is the purpose of your trip to the United States?"

"Visiting family," Matt says. It's almost true.

"Your final destination is Los Angeles?"

"Yes." Matt's throat is dry.

"And how long is your trip?"

"Six weeks," Matt says. Who knows.

"That's a long time."

"They need a lot of help," Matt says.

The man glances at him but doesn't press. He stamps Matt's passport with an authoritative thunk. "Step forward, please."

Matt stands in front of a solid blue backdrop. When the camera flashes, he flinches.

+

Matt drifts through the LA airport as if through water. He slashes his credit card through the slot on a vending machine and summons a can of Red Bull. Jesus Christ, it's cold in here, he thinks. He zips up his vest and cracks open the little can.

At Heathrow, he bought a bunch of Cadbury bars and shoved them in his backpack. If he needs a peace offering, he'll give them to Mello. Otherwise he'll eat them himself. Once his appetite comes back.

A tired-looking security guard sits beneath a sign that reads _No Re-entry Past This Point_. This is it. Matt hoists his backpack higher up on his shoulder and feels his chest tighten and his blood pressure rise.

Come on, Jeevas. It's just a job, he tells himself. Just do the job, and when all this is over, then you can sort things out with Mello.

Matt steps out onto a mezzanine. Escalators lead to a broad arc of people waiting below. Most of them carry signs with printed names; a few hold up colorful posters. Matt spots a blonde figure in a black coat standing off to the side. The feathery trim on his hood gives him a sinister appearance. It makes Matt think of an illustration he hasn't seen in years, some mythical figure from a book, with thick plumes around his shoulders. Matt had almost forgotten about that strange book from L.

Matt grips the rail of the escalator and the man's face gets closer.

So it was him.

Mello waits with his hands in his pockets, vinyl pants shining under the skylights. He's taller and broader than Matt remembers, while still managing to be a short, lanky guy. He had been so skinny as a kid, though not nearly as frail looking as Near.

Matt steps off the escalator and stands in front of him for a silent, awkward moment. Matt tried to avoid rehearsing what to say. He failed. But after so many imagined meetings, the only words that come out are "Who let you out of the house dressed like that?"

Mello tilts his head back. His laughter fills the crowded atrium. He looks at Matt with a wily, feral smile. "Well. It's nice to see you, too."

+

"You've got to be kidding," Matt says.

"What?" Mello looks at him and draws his keys from his pocket. A crucifix and little ceramic skull with rhinestone eyes dangle from the chain.

"This is your car." Matt looks at the black El Camino gleaming in the afternoon sun.

"It was a gift." Mello unlocks the doors.

"From who?" Matt throws his backpack onto the back seat and opens the passenger door.

"Someone who owed me a favor." Mello starts the engine.

"Did you pick it out, or--"

"You don't like anything, do you," Mello says.

"What? No, I'm just...surprised..."

Mello snickers. "I'm just giving you a hard time. You wear those stripes so I'd recognize you?"

Matt shrugs. He did.

"All right, let's get out of here." Mello pulls out of the seemingly endless parking lot.

Matt shrugs off his vest. "How do you put up with the heat here," he mutters.

"Better than the cold in England," Mello says.

Matt looks out the window. Haze hangs in the air. "Weird to be on the right side of the road again," he says.

"Yeah. I've gotten used to it."

"Did you get a real driver's license, or--"

"What do you think?" Mello grins.

Matt isn't sure what to think.

"So how are things on the left side of the road?" Mello asks.

Matt sits still for a moment.

"I mean back in Britain," Mello says.

"Oh. Ok, I guess. I went to Belfast last week."

"What? Why?" Mello grimaces.

Matt shrugs. "I don't know. I just felt like it. I guess I just...wondered what it would have been like. You know. If I never..." Matt can't bring himself to mention L.

Mello's eyes darken. "You couldn't pay me to go back to Minsk."

"Why's that?"

"There's only one person I care about in that whole city and I'm pretty sure she's dead by now," Mello says, his eyes fixed on the road.

"You don't care about many people, do you?"

Mello turns to him. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing." Matt looks at his feet. They join a slow moving ribbon of traffic. "I found your photos," he says after a moment.

Mello lets out a low laugh. "You looked me up."

"Of course I looked you up," Matt says. He leans back in his seat and sighs. "You didn't seem like you wanted to be found."

Mello runs his hand through his hair and turns to Matt, his eyes narrow. "Matt...if you were about to do something...that even you thought was a little insane...would you really want to drag other people into it?"

Matt rubs his eyes.

"I mean, if you knew you had no guarantee of success," Mello waves his hand, "and you didn't know what all you'd have to do to get what you wanted--"

"You didn't have everything planned out the day you left?" Matt asks.

"Oh, I had a plan." Mello cracks a smile. "But if it didn't work, you think I was going to let anyone else see that?"

Matt rolls his eyes. How strangely lucid of you, he thinks. Humble, even.

"My little alter ego gimmick got me this far," Mello says.

How much of that is an alter ego, and how much of that is really you, Matt wonders.

"But if I'm going to get any farther, I need someone fresh who knows what the fuck they're doing."

Matt nods and looks at the river of tail lights ahead of them. He folds his arms. He wants to say it's good to be here. He wants to say it's good to see you again. But is it? "I got a call from Halle Lidner," Matt says. "This morning, on my way to the airport."

"You too, huh?"

"I told her I took another job, but I didn't say where."

"Good," Mello says. "I'm glad you chose me over that albino rubber duck."

"Ok, I don't like Near, either, Mel, but he's got a lot of firepower on his side--"

"You're not suggesting--"

"What? No. Never," Matt says. "I'm just saying--"

"Listen," Mello says. "I have connections here. I have people even the FBI can't find. And they don't answer to anyone but me. You want firepower, I got plenty."

"So why did you call me in?" Matt's voice cracks.

"Because these people are better at hiding than seeking. And a lot of them have been digging their own graves for a long time," Mello says. "And I need someone outside their little network pulling strings."

Matt nods.

"And because I knew you wouldn't have forgotten about me," Mello adds as they merge onto a different highway.

Matt feels a flush of heat through his body against the chill of the air conditioning.


	4. Chapter 4

Matt gazes out the window. "Of course I didn't forget about you," he says, his voice almost a whisper.

If you only knew how hard I tried to, he thinks. Do you even know how hard it is to kill someone off in your mind, so you don't make yourself ill thinking about them?

"But it's not like anyone else forgot about you either, Mel," Matt says. "You got to be the resident ghost for a couple years, you know that? Like something between alive and dead. Trust me, you're not that easy to forget."

Mello keeps looking straight ahead, pensive. "You say that like I owe you an apology. For leaving."

Matt says nothing, not wanting his voice to crack and betray his anger.

Mello scowls. "That pasty freak Near hasn't made any more progress than I have, has he."

"I don't know exactly what he knows, Mel." Matt's voice is thin and flat.

"But you know this whole case has been at a fucking standstill for the last four years, is what I'm getting at."

"Yeah. I got it."

The traffic stops again.

"Matt. I have a plan. And it's working," Mello grits his teeth between sentences. "But it's not working any faster than anyone else's. Until now. That's why I called you now, and not earlier." Mello looks over at Matt slowly. "Part of my plan is not making you put up with all the horseshit I've been dealing with here for the past four years."

Matt's chest feels like it's about to cave in. He takes deep breaths as subtly as he can. Then I guess I ought to be grateful, if you think that would have hurt me worse.

Mello changes lanes. They creep along. Horns and shouts from the other drivers punctuate the silence.

"You care if I smoke in here?" Matt asks. This time his voice does crack.

"Only if you give me a light."

Matt lights two cigarettes and hands one to Mello.

"When did you start smoking?"

Matt sighs. "In Zürich. With Olga. About six months ago. I don't know...I was bored." Talking to Olga was awkward enough. Matt felt strange and incorporeal trying to talk to her band of acquaintances. The smoking took the edge off. At very least, it was a conversation starter outside whichever club or bar they dragged him to. "I figured if L could have a vice, I got to have one, too," Matt says.

"Just one?"

Matt had almost forgotten what Mello's laugh sounds like. It sounds strange to him, now. Crueler.

A minivan covered in stickers from Disneyland pulls in front of them. Mello punches the horn and flips them off.

Then he takes a long drag. "Did you come here because you wanted to take this job, or because you missed me?"

Mello's words are like a knife in Matt's gut.

Matt shuts his eyes. "It can't be both?" His voice is involuntarily light.

Mello taps the ash out the rolled down window.

Matt turns to Mello. "Did you invite me over here because you actually need my help, or because you missed me?"

Mello scoffs.

"Come on," Matt says. "In the four years you've been over here, you didn't meet anyone else you wanted to work with."

Mello takes another drag, cracks his neck, and turns to him again. "It can't be both?"

They drive and smoke in silence.

+

The unforgiving heat pours in from the open car windows. Mello turns the air conditioning down one notch colder.

Matt's long sleeves are pushed up, and Mello notices the contour of his arms, the way the stripes on his shirt declare the shape of his body. Matt, always in stripes, with those yellow goggles. It makes Mello think of a ring-tailed lemur with big yellow eyes. Matt will always be a pale, skinny gamer, Mello thinks, but time has still been kind. His previously flaming red hair has gotten much darker, but it still shines red when the light hits it. His freckled face has a red glow to it, and Mello can't tell whether it's from the heat, or from his obvious discomfort.

So. What's the one thing you need more than anything else, Mello wonders.

Then he catches himself. Matt's not a client. You're not supposed to get your hooks into him like that.

But he notices the way Matt shifts in his seat, the strain to his voice when he talks, the way his eyes linger a little too long, then dart away guiltily.

As if you don't have hooks in him already. Is that what he needs? A tug of the hook, to bring him back here? To be missed? To be needed?

It's a good thing he wasn't here sooner. I would have gotten distracted. Maybe he wouldn't have been a distraction back then. But Aiko always took the piss out of me for not going on any real dates. She didn't understand how much work I had to do. I know that much about myself, at least. I know what will get in my way.

Matt and Mello are on their third cigarette each by the time they approach Mello's apartment complex; a cluster of unassuming brick buildings with twelve stories each.

"Jesus Christ, how do you live with the traffic here?" Matt rubs his eyes.

"I don't," Mello says. "I hate it every goddamn day."

Mello watches Matt get out of the car. Though on this day, perhaps, he hates it just a little bit less.

+

Mello opens the door to unit 404.

"You chose that on purpose, didn't you," Matt says.

Mello shrugs and walks inside. The ceilings are low, the walls are exposed brick. He throws his jacket over the back of a red velvet couch with zebra stripes. Or are they tiger stripes? It's hard for Matt to tell with the garish red.

Matt stares at the couch with the same incredulity as he stared at the car in the parking lot. "Tell me this was also a gift."

"It was," Mello says.

"Same person?"

"Nope."

Matt cocks an eyebrow.

"What? This guy had an extra couch. You'll meet him later," Mello says. "Ok, you want the couch or the bed?"

Figures, Matt thinks, that there would only be one bedroom.

"No, you know what, forget it, you take the bed, I'll take the couch," Mello says. "You can't appreciate it."

Matt rolls his eyes. Time has passed, and yet part of Mello remains stuck at twelve years old. At least that's the part I know how to deal with.

"Ok, fine. Thanks." Matt walks into the small, adjacent bedroom.

"There's something for you in the drawer. Look in the night table," Mello says from the living room.

Matt lays his backpack down on the iron-framed bed. A lamp with a red shade sits on the small table next to it. Matt opens the drawer. Inside it lies the figure of Mary Magdalene, a handgun with a crucifix hanging from the handle, and a black leather box. Matt takes out the box and opens the hinged lid. Inside is an identical gun, minus the gold charm.

"Am I actually going to need this?" Matt turns around.

Mello leans in the doorframe behind him. "Welcome to America."

Matt looks at the gray metal handgun again. "I don't know how to use this."

"I know. There's a range outside of town. I'll take you there tomorrow." Mello draws his phone from his pocket to check the time. He doesn't wear a watch. "Ok," he says. "I have to be somewhere. I'm going to be back tonight. In the meantime, you look like death, so you should probably get some sleep. If you feel ambitious," Mello nods to a laptop charging on the floor by the doorframe, "get started without me."

"Where are you going?" Matt asks.

"One of my disposable associates," Mello says. "I'll fill you in later." He turns to leave.

"Hey Mel," Matt says. "Why did you hang a cross from your gun?"

Mello stops and squints. He stands still for a few seconds. He looks at the drawer, and then back at Matt. "Because if I shoot someone, it's the last thing I want them to see."

Mello turns to leave, and Matt notices the familiar way his hair swishes over his shoulders when he walks.

At least you're coming back this time. You better.

+

Mello weaves through the cars on his motorcycle, a black Kawasaki he bought off a client of Aiko's. Horns blare, and Mello dodges the drivers trying in vain to change lanes. He figured Matt would remember the little statue. He hadn't expected Matt to ask about the charm on the gun. It picks at him.

Mello zips between two mostly-still lanes for as far as he can and scowls. There are clients who just want one person to know their secret. Even if only one other person knows, even if it's hired company, it's enough to take away the bulk of the burden.

It was such a stupid thing to buy, the figurine. As if I could take Magda with me.

Magda was Polish and fervently Catholic, and Mello pieced together later that she ended up in Minsk through a series of cruel betrayals by a former spouse. Her Russian was patchy, but passable. Good enough to get her a job taking care of abandoned children. Good enough to tell the stories that Mello wanted to hear over and over, and to read from the orphanage's worn-out books.

Magda knew stories that weren't in the books. Mello wanted to write them down. He was not quite four years old. Magda put a pencil in his hand and guided it to draw the letters. First the Cyrillic letters, then the Latin ones. Mello drew the letters over and over, again and again. Then the Russian words he knew, then the Polish ones that Magda taught him.

"They're the same, but different," Mello said.

"Yes, they are, aren't they, Mishka?" Magda had tears in her eyes.

Many of the children in the home were barely social. They would scream and cry and hit or bite you. Mello was also known to scream and cry and bite, but he was the only one who sat transfixed on Magda's lap with a pencil in his hand. The boy who wrote stories. First short ones, then ones that went on for pages. First the ones Magda told him, then ones he made up himself. How Watari caught wind of the orphan in Minsk who wrote stories, Mello never found out.

The rosary Magda gave him on the day he left remains wrapped around his wrist. She swore that the one he wears around his neck came from his mother--one he was found with. As a child, he believed it completely. Yes, of course. Something his mother wanted him to have. The older he got, the more doubt began to creep in. No, he told himself. If it's true, then it means your mother loved you enough to leave you a sign. If it's a lie, it means Magda loved you enough to lie.

Mello bought the gold charm the day he bought his gun. Two of his guardians had given him crosses. When he bought one for himself, he said this is it. They wanted to protect me. But I'm my own guardian now. No one can do what I'm about to do but me. I'm going to be the best. I'm going to rid the world of this real evil. I have one demon to exorcise, and I'll do whatever it takes to do it. From here on out, I protect myself.

+

It's not until Mello has gone and the silence sets in that Matt becomes aware of the sting of fatigue in his body. At least they have no set work hours for the jet lag to ruin. L worked 24/7, after all, Matt thinks.

Matt can't tell how long Mello has had the apartment. Besides the horrid couch, it has the bare minimum of furnishings. The bed and night table. A dresser. The living room has only the couch and a coffee table, and a desk with a haphazard cluster of monitors in the corner. It looks like the apartment of someone who didn't intend to stay long, and ended up staying anyways. Or who spends very little time at home. Surely, Matt thinks, he doesn't bring clients over here. Does he?

Matt wanders back into the living room, then to the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator. It stands almost completely empty except for a carton of chocolate milk and a half-empty case of Red Bull. Matt picks up the carton and sniffs it. It's gone sour. He pours the spoiled milk down the sink and tosses the empty carton in the trash. He opens the freezer. Three handles of Grey Goose vodka. He opens a cabinet. Jagermesiter and Kahlua. In the next, a box of Cocoa Puffs. He pulls open a drawer, and sees only chocolate bars. Hershey's, Meiji, Lindt.

"This is ridiculous," Matt says to the empty kitchen.

Ok, once I've had the chance to sleep, I'll get us real food. I've gotten thin enough as it is, I'm not about to go on an all-chocolate diet and look as lean and gaunt as he does.

Then Matt heaves a sigh. All he has to eat are the Cadbury bars in his backpack, if they haven't melted.

Fuck it.

He peels one open and takes a bite, the chocolate makes a satisfying snap. Well, it's better than nothing. And it does make him feel better.

Matt opens the closets and drawers. They reveal all manner of shiny black clothing, mesh and fishnet things he can't identify. Uniforms that no military on earth has ever actually worn. So many kinds of rope. A vintage doctor's bag of medieval-looking surgical devices.

Matt crumples up the chocolate wrapper and throws it in the bathroom trashcan. The bathroom is mysteriously crowded. In the medicine cabinet: sleeping pills and eyeliner. Multiple brands of shampoo jostle for space around the edge of the bathtub. A dozen half-empty bottles of expensive cologne take up the singular shelf.

Ok, priorities, Matt thinks.

Jesus, Mel. What is your life? You have this shitty apartment with this shitty furniture, and it's all packed with these ridiculous, expensive clothes. Can't wait to hear you explain to me how your Tom Ford perfume helps you find Kira.

Matt rubs his eyes. He kicks off his boots and collapses onto the creaking bed. You are the strangest person I know, he thinks.

I hate how much I missed you.

+

It's dark when Matt wakes up. The apartment is quiet. A bass line rumbles in from a passing car outside. Matt looks at his phone and is surprised to see it's only seven in the evening. He thought he would have slept longer.

His back cracks when he gets up. A mattress that lousy probably never sees visitors, he thinks. Then he realizes that he hopes it doesn't.

He doesn't call out to see if Mello is in the apartment. There are no texts or missed calls. He pulls a cracked glass from the kitchen cabinet and fills it with water from the sink.

I guess I'm starting without you, then.

Matt opens Mello's laptop and sees the password prompt. Mello left no instructions, no files, no CDs. Is he testing me?

Matt reaches over to take out his own computer, then stops. It would take him less than an hour to get into an ordinary person's laptop. Surely, he thinks, Mello has some more complex security system. It would be just like him to want to show it off, prove what he can do after all this time. But no, on the other hand, he wouldn't want to waste time. Or does he not consider showing off a waste of time? Matt squints in the low light.

Come on, Matt. Think. What does he want you to do? What would L do, if he were Mello, and what would he do if he were you?

Matt looks around the room. Ok. Everything is potentially meaningful. He massages his temples, still waking up. Then he sits up straight.

There's something for me in the drawer.

Matt opens the drawer again. Only the two guns and the small statue. He picks it up and examines it. You were so embarrassed by it before, why am I allowed to see it now?

He types into the password field. _mariedemagdala_.

_Incorrect password. You have 9 attempts remaining._

Fuck. Matt frowns and tries again. _magdala_.

The laptop chimes and opens to a screen full of documents.

+

The apartment is empty when Mello gets back, and the spare keys are gone from the hook by the door. Mello takes a thin CD case out of the inner pocket of his motorcycle jacket and lays it next to the ashtray on the coffee table. Fresh smoke still hangs in the air.

Mello looks at the screen of his laptop, open on the desk. If Matt had tried to hack into it, the security client would have sent a text to his phone. But the only missed messages are from Rod and Ito. Needy fuckers.

It's open to a browser tab, a search. _Grocery stores near me_.

Mello throws his jacket on top of the other one on the back of the couch and grabs a Red Bull from the refrigerator.

The front door opens, and Matt walks in laden with white plastic bags. A lit cigarette hangs from his mouth. He kicks the door shut behind him.

"The hell is all that?" Mello looks him up and down.

Matt rolls his eyes. "What does it look like?" He hauls the bags into the kitchen and starts unpacking them.

"You're going to eat all of that?"

Matt pulls out cereal and milk, boxes of microwave curry, bags of apples, paper cartons of Chinese takeout. "No, I was going to eat half of it."

"Psh. I didn't hire you to be a fucking housekeeper--"

"Mel, come on. You look like a skeleton. Do you ever eat anything that isn't chocolate--"

"Uh, yeah. I had ramen--"

"When?" Matt asks.

"Two days ago."

Matt grips a handful of his hair. "Ok, see, this is what I'm talking about. I mean, seriously, you can't live off of air and sugar alone--"

"So what? L did." Mello sips his drink.

"Oh. Wow. Right. Can't argue with that." Matt puts the milk in the refrigerator.

"Oh, come off it, Doctor Jeevas. What, did Eva and Roger teach you how to cook while I was gone? You got a an extra bachelor's in nutrition? Cause you're clearly the paragon of health here."

Matt shoves the cereal in the cabinets.

"Oh, while we're at it," Mello swipes the cigarette out of Matt's mouth, "why don't you quit smoking?" He throws it on the ground and crushes it with his foot. "And stand up straight." He tilts Matt's chin up with his finger. "You'll ruin your posture." He scowls. "I didn't bring you here because I needed some kind of life coach, all right?"

All this can wait. This domestic bullshit can wait until we're done with Kira. I need you to work for me, not take care of me, Mello thinks.

Matt crosses his arms. "Why does it bother you? Me bringing you food?"

"It doesn't fucking matter, Matt--"

"No, I'm serious. You hired me to help you, right? So don't go getting pissed at me for trying to fucking help you. Here." Matt shoves a plastic fork into one of the paper boxes and holds it out in front of him.

Mello looks at it, then at Matt, then at the box again.

"Ok, look. I don't know what kind of supernatural being you are," Matt says, "but if I'm going to work, I have to have some kind of fuel. Sorry for mistaking you for a human. I forgot, you get all your energy from being better than everyone else--"

"Jesus, Matt. Just give me the food. What is it?"

Matt hands him the box. "This one's fried rice. It's from across the street."

Mello sits on the couch and takes a bite. Kind of greasy, but it's good. He's barely thought about food all day. It's better that way, he thinks. One less thing to worry about. One less distraction.

Matt sits down next to him. They eat in silence for a moment.

"You know, for the record, L ate like a horse--"

"Shut up," Mello says.

His appetite had tanked since Kira took Aiko, since he left another massive, gaping hole in Mello's life that he couldn't ignore. Eating had become tedious, a chore. At least the chocolate kept him awake when he worked, and reminded him of L. At least the alcohol put him to sleep when it was time. If he ever missed them, any of them--L, Aiko, Magda, or Matt--he could blur their faces out with vodka, and wake up back on task.

"Did you read the notes I left you?"

Matt laughs and nearly chokes on a piece of rice. He looks at the computer. "You mean the fucking book you wrote? I got about a third of the way through it before I thought I was going to pass out from hunger."

"I'd think you of all people would appreciate me being thorough," Mello says.

"Mel. You have four years worth of material here...there's being detailed, and then there's...shit. How did you put it? So I got all the info on this Takimura guy, but do you really have to call him 'a sniveling asshole who looks like a pug in a suit that his mother picked out for him'?"

"You clearly don't appreciate my flair for detail," Mello says. "L was all about details."

Matt laughs. "Oh. 'Flair.' Yes, that's a good way to put it. Yes, your notes are...full of flair."

"Did you at least get far enough to figure out what this is?" Mello picks up the disk.

"Blueprints," Matt says.

"Good." Rod Ross's hideout takes up a disused warehouse forty miles east of the city.

"You really plan to torch this place?"

"That depends on what Rod does," Mello says. "And if it gets compromised. You should know that," he sneers. "It's in the notes." He takes a sip of Red Bull.

"I'm getting there," Matt says.

"Dude, relax. I'm kidding. I didn't even expect you to be awake until tomorrow anyway."

"Well I'm not exactly bursting with energy," Matt says. "I just couldn't sleep."

It's good, Mello thinks. It's good he got as far as he did, and that got the password. But I can't just tell him that.

"You know how to hack a security camera feed?" Mello asks.

Matt looks at the ground for a second. "Please don't talk to me like I'm a child."

Mello laughs. "All right. Good. Two nights from now--"

"I know, Mel." Matt stabs his fork back into his rice. "I got that far."

They have eight hundred pounds of C4 to retrieve from a shipping dock the following night. Then they have a four-hour window the next night to install it, to give Mello total control of the building and everyone in it.

"Ok, in the meantime I need you to to look at those blueprints and figure out all the load bearing pillars we need to take out."

Matt nods. "Right on."

Mello pokes at his food. He takes a few reluctant bites.

He'd been waiting for this. Finally. The intelligent outsider, the missing wheel in all his plans from here on out. The unknown operator behind the scenes. This is it. This means progress. And they're even ahead of schedule.

But Mello still feels uncomfortably warm sitting next to Matt. They bickered as kids, but each time Matt snaps back at him now, Mello feels a little rush, a little pull in his stomach.

I know what to do about this, Mello thinks. If you can't sleep, and I don't need the distraction.

"Let's go out," Mello says.

"What?"

"Your first night in America, we ought to do something, right?" Mello stretches and cracks his knuckles.

"I--sure. All right. Why not."

"You got a fake ID?" Mello asks.

"Shit," Matt says.

"You got anything that says you're 21?"

"Uh...yes. I think. Let me check." Mat walks into the bedroom. He comes back with a stack of fake passports and ID cards.

Mello pulls a passport off the top. "Ok, what have we got here?" The photo is clearly of Matt, but with another fake name. "Milo Jivaš. Croatian. Oh, very nice. I see you got creative."

Matt scratches the back of his neck. "How old am I in that one?"

"Twenty-two," Mello says.

"Right."

"Come on Milo, let's go get a drink," Mello says. He pulls his phone from his pocket. "I'll get us a taxi."


	5. Chapter 5

The cab that pulls up to the apartment reeks of weed. Matt supposes smoke is like saliva: if it's yours or belongs to someone you're kissing, it's not so foul. 

Mello rolls his eyes as he sits down. Matt assumes most of Mello's clothes are dry clean only. He tries to imagine the looks on the cleaners' faces seeing Mello's getup. But maybe, in a city like this, even someone as flamboyant as Mello blends right in. 

"Where we goin'?" the driver asks.

"Rashad's," Mello says. "On Drexel and Worth--"

"Hey man," the driver says languidly. "I know this city. I get you there."

Mello scowls.

The empty middle seat between him and Matt feels infinitely wide, like an invisible wall. Matt remembers the way they used to sit next to each other on every bus or van trip. They always fought over the window seat, and on the rare occasions Matt won, Mello would still climb over his lap to get a better view. Why Mello never sat by himself, in an empty row with an unobscured view, Matt couldn't say. 

They sit in silence for a moment. 

"Good thing we each get a window this time," Matt says. His throat is tight.

Mello laughs low, under his breath. "Yeah." He stretches his arm out along the upper edge of the back seat. His knuckles barely graze Matt's shoulder. 

Matt's body stiffens. Mello's not even touching him, but he feels it in his gut: a longing to get closer. We used to touch each other all the time as kids. Ok, half the time you were hitting me, but still. It was nothing. Just the most normal thing. 

Why does it feel so forbidden now?

"So where are we going?" Matt asks Mello under the pulsing reggae beat from the radio.

Mello smirks. "You wanted to know where I got the couch from?"

"Oh Jesus," Matt says.

"No, trust me. This place is great. My friend owns it."

"You have friends?" The words come out of Matt's mouth before he can stop himself.

Mello turns to him slowly. "Believe it or not."

In a way, Matt does find it hard to believe. Mello took such little interest in the other kids at Wammy's, with the exception of his eternal grudge against Near. Matt feels relieved that Mello wasn't completely alone, then jealous of whoever it was that kept him company. 

"Do your...'friends'...know what you do?" Matt asks.

Mello sneers. "They know I do something besides dress up and beat people up for money, if that's what you mean. But as to what, I let them wonder."

"They're not helpful, then," Matt says.

Mello looks at him. "Didn't I tell you it's part of my plan to keep people out of this until the time is right?"

Matt says nothing. 

"Besides, it depends on what you mean by helpful. Yeah, some of them are plebian fools, but for getting a sick-ass couch they're just as helpful as they can be." Mello smiles wryly. "Or the car, for that matter." He runs his hand through his hair. 

So you haven't been alone, but you still need me. I guess I ought to feel honored, Matt thinks. "Yeah, those are...not the words I would use to describe that couch."

"Tch. Since when are you some design genius?"

"I'm pretty good at designing things, you know." Matt thinks of the software he wrote with Olga, and the swirling cloud of game design ideas that always occupies is head. "And that car is ridiculous."

"That car is awesome," Mello says.

"Ok, these things aren't mutually exclusive." Matt holds his hands up.

Mello shakes his head. The little smile that creeps onto his face looks like one that Matt hasn't seen since they were children. It hurts.

They turn a corner and Matt notices a group of people of indeterminate gender waiting on the sidewalk, in corsets and enormous platform heels. Where are you taking me?

The driver parks under the red glow of a neon sign. Mello begrudgingly plucks a few bills from his wallet and hands them to him. He slams the door as he steps out of the cab. 

"I fucking hate the smell of weed," Mello says. He sniffs the shoulder of his jacket and grimaces.

Matt finds his disgust a little comical. He feels a twinge of pride at being right. "So you don't smoke it, then."

"I don't," Mello says.

"So...cigarettes are fine, but--"

"I hate anything that makes you dull," Mello says.

"What the--Mel, your kitchen is ninety percent alcohol!" 

"Alcohol's different."

Matt laughs. "Is it now?"

"Absolutely," Mello says, his voice a little growl.

An enormous bouncer sits perched on a stool that threatens to collapse under his weight. Mello looks like a feathery toothpick in comparison, Matt thinks. But it's the bouncer who seems nervous as Mello strides up to him. 

The man nods. "Who's your friend?" He looks at Matt.

"This is Milo," Mello says without missing a beat. 

Fuck, Matt thinks. That sounds dumb. But maybe it's dumb enough to sound like a coincidence. It was Roger who chose the alias, and no one left at Wammy's ever expected to see Mello again. 

The man looks back and forth between the two of them for a second. "Mello and Milo. Got a nice ring to it." He nods again.

Mello wraps a shiny arm around Matt's shoulders. "Indeed."

Matt tries not to flinch. He pulls the fake passport out of his pocket and hands it to the bouncer.

The man squints. "So where's Croatia?"

"Nine hours ahead of here," Matt says. 

"Long trip, huh?" The bouncer hands back the passport. "All right M and M, you two go crazy." He pulls the door open and more red light spills onto the street. 

Matt follows Mello's silhouette inside.

**

"I hate them," Mello said. He lay with his head in Aiko's lap. 

She held her wine glass in one hand and ran her long fingernails through Mello's hair with the other. The TV flickered in the corner, playing a favorite film of hers: The Five Deadly Venoms.

"They're all so fucking disgusting," he said. Then he sighed. "Except maybe Hatori. He was probably all right in his twenties."

Aiko laughed. "We could get you some younger, prettier clients, you know."

"Yeah, but they don't have the money. Or the connections." Mello shut his eyes. The lessons had long since ended. The only other person who had touched his hair, Mello thought, must have been Magda. Or maybe L, when they all still called him Ryuzaki. During one of L's early visits, Mello tripped and fell, playing with the other kids outside. L scooped him up without a word and carried him, bloody-nosed and wailing, back inside. 

Aiko sipped her wine and drew the pads of her fingers up the back of Mello's neck. "What are you looking for, Mellie?" 

Mello lay silent for a moment.

"Most kids I know who run away from home don't speak five languages."

"Yeah, I forgot, you only spoke two when you made it to LA," he said. 

She snickered. "Don't ignore my question, Mel."

He wished he could tell her. He hates himself for believing the less she knew, the safer she'd be. What a joke. He wishes he'd told her now. 

"It's exhausting to keep a secret, isn't it."

Mello hated how good her hand felt on his neck, surprised at how tense and tight he shoulders and scalp were. "I know, I know, that's why people pay us--"

"It is, but that's not what I mean right now," she said.

Mello took a deep breath. "I'm looking for a person."

"Ah, a person?" She said, gently mocking him.

"It's someone I have to get rid of," Mello said.

"Is it now? If they're a criminal, won't Kira get them first?" She wasn't above the occasional cruel jab, but she would never know how much that one hurt.

Mello scoffed. "I would never give Kira the satisfaction."

"So, what did this person do?"

"They...took something away from me," Mello said. 

"I see."

Mello looked up at Aiko. "I don't want to say any more about it than that."

She smiled. She looked back at the TV screen again and Mello shut his eyes.

"You never go out with anyone," she said at the end of a fight scene.

"I told you. I don't have time."

"Revenge is that important, huh?"

"It is," Mello said. 

Aiko pinched his shoulder and worked on a knot beneath his skin. She had an impressive grip for someone with delicate looking hands. Mello supposed L had been the same way. Frail looking, but unexpectedly athletic. 

It's better that they're gross, these men, Mello thought. If it had been someone he cared about on the other end of the leash, or suspended in the air, or licking his boots, the distraction would have driven him insane. Worrying if they were all right. If he was good enough.

Aiko set her empty glass on the coffee table. She lay one arm across Mello's shoulders, and continued stroking her fingers through his hair.

It gave him a total high to crack a whip, to watch the red marks appear on his clients' skin, to be begged and pleaded and praised. If it didn't, he would find it totally intolerable. This was arguably easier than hacking, and more fun than straight up blackmail.

But Aiko's hands made him want to melt. A different kind of high. 

"Lots of people like both," she told him once. "Lots of people even need both."

Mello simply rolled his eyes then, still distressed at the prospect of having two predilictions at once.

"Even I get someone to do a suspension for me every once in a while," she said.

"You're joking," Mello sneered.

She shook her head. "It's good to let off a little steam. Let go, you know. It gives me...the sense of what I for other people."

"Who do you even go to?"

Aiko grinned. "Rashad."

**

The bartender hands them each a Red Square, Mello's 'usual'; Red Bull with a shot of vodka. The bass makes the air vibrate, but Matt hears the swish of Rashad's lace fan and the click of his heels before he sees him: tall and bald and covered in glitter and sequins, in a gleaming red gown with a long slit up the side. 

Rashad lays a large, manicured hand on Mello's shoulder. Mello turns around slowly. 

"I am so hurt," Rashad says, "that you did not introduce me to your friend. He's adorable." He looks at Matt, and Matt shrinks back ever so slightly on his barstool. "Who is this?"

Mello sips his drink. "This is Matt."

Rashad looks Matt up and down and shakes his head, eyelids flashing. "Well. Fun comes in all sizes, doesn't it."

Mello scowls. "He's not a client."

"Baby, in four years I have never seen you bring a client in here," Rashad says with a laugh. "The young, pretty ones can't afford you, anyway."

Mello wears a smug little half-smile.

"All right, darling, don't let me interrupt. You come see me if you need anything, ok?" Rashad bats his false eyelashes. 

Mello holds up his glass. "We're good for now."

Rashad looks at Matt again and touches his lips before he walks off. 

"So...I take it that's Rashad," Matt says.

"It is."

"How did you, uh...get to know each other?" Matt swirls his straw around in his drink. 

"We had a mutual friend," Mello says.

Amazing. More friends. "Had?" 

Mello glances at Matt. "I'm gonna' need about four more of these before we go down that road."

Matt nods. "Noted." He looks around the bar. The garish red couches are everywhere, but in a room full of people in fetish wear, they make sense. The singular couch in Mello's empty apartment seems unusually awkward and sad to Matt now. At least it has Mello's insane wardrobe to keep it company.

Mello's jacket hangs from a hook beneath the bar. His shiny vest ends just an inch or so above his belt, showing a little sliver of abdomen and the tight dimples in his lower back. 

Matt catches Mello's gaze as he looks back up. His face flushes. He notices Mello's drink is already halfway empty. Surely it can't be because he's nervous.

"What?" Mello says.

"Nothing." Matt looks back at the bar, but the mirror behind the rows of shining bottles reflects both of them. The first touch of inebriation wraps itself around him like a fuzzy blanket. He supposes jet lag and dehydration don't help.

"How's your drink?" Mello's smile is crafty.

"It...tastes like Red Bull with vodka in it?" Matt gives a nervous little laugh. 

"You're going to need another one of those, I can tell."

"Well I'm not trying to keep up with you," Matt says. 

The bar is just crowded enough not to make Matt feel awkwardly exposed, but not so packed they can't hear each other. The little stage and DJ booth are still empty. Recorded music plays. 

"You can't keep up with me," Mello says. "At anything."

Matt laughs. "Oh, really?" He turns back to Mello. "Then why'd you fly me all the way out to LA?"

Mello just grins.

"As I recall, I used to smoke your ass at video games."

"That doesn't count, it's not real."

"Also chess," Matt says.

"Still doesn't count."

"You keep talking to me like that, I will get back on a flight to London tomorrow, I am not kidding." I am never this bold, Matt thinks. But it's been a long time since Mello provoked him, and he finds himself suddenly regressing. 

Mello snickers, and it hurts again to see him laugh, the way it makes him look younger. 

"Or Zurich. Fuck London. I'll just go straight to Zurich and then your broke ass can come grovel when I'm sitting on a pile of cash working at Kreuz," Matt says. "Next to Olga's slightly larger pile of cash." He looks at the floor, but can't stop from smiling.

Mello laughs, then scoffs. "Tell me, what about me makes me look broke? Huh? 'Cause trust me, that is not my problem right now--"

"It's not you, it's that shithole apartment you live in." Matt takes a long swill of his drink.

"The apartment doesn't matter, it's just an office," Mello says. "I spend where it counts."

Matt pulls on the shoulder of Mello's vest. "Like on this fine get up you got here?"

"I had this custom made, I'll have you know--"

"Yeah, 'cause no one in their right mind would mass produce that."

Mello slams his empty glass onto the bar, but even still, he's smiling.

"Oh I'm not saying I don't like it," Matt says.

"Oh, what? You like it? Do you?" Mello waves his hands down his body and arches his back a little. The red lights shine down the fabric.

"Well, it's, eh...it's very you, I'll say that much."

They sit in silence for a second. Then Matt snorts with laughter. 

"Eva would have killed you if you tried to wear something like that," he says. His glass is empty now, too.

"I can hear the indignant screams now," Mello says. He signals to the bartender for another round.

"She'd have told you you looked like a prostitute."

"Well she wouldn't exactly have been wrong, now would she?"

Matt shudders a little.

"You know I don't actually have sex with them, right? The clients."

Matt hadn't been sure. "Honestly, I wasn't going to ask."

Two new drinks clunk down on the bar in front of them. 

Mello reaches for his. "Nice to see you still look like you beat up a mime and stole his outfit," he says.

"Wow. Thanks."

"Oh, I'm not saying I don't like it," Mello says. He looks Matt over and Matt feels himself cringe internally. 

"Well don't expect me to come to you to for fashion advice," Matt says.

"You don't need a makeover," Mello says.

Matt isn't sure if that's a compliment or not. Is he hitting on me, Matt wonders, or just trying to mess with me?

A woman in a silver catsuit loads CDs into the decks at the DJ booth. She pulls up a fader and the music gets louder. Matt has to lean in closer to Mello to talk.

"You seem like you're enjoying your life here, for the most part," Matt says. At least, it seems that way for someone who loves to complain, he thinks.

"It's a means to an end," Mello says. "Yeah, I guess there's parts of it that don't suck."

"If you weren't out here doing this, what would you be doing?" 

Mello draws back, squinting. "Working for L, is that even a question?" He takes another sip. "Why, what would you do?"

"I thought about going back to school--"

"What the fuck?" Mello nearly spits out his drink. "What school on earth is going to teach you something you don't already know? I mean," Mello lays a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Do you really think suicide by boredom is the right choice? I know we've had a rough go of it, but--"

Matt flings Mello's hand off his shoulder. "I mean for game design, Mel. Something really specific. Jesus."

"Game design."

"Yeah."

Mello looks at him.

"What? I think I'd be really good at it," Matt says.

"I'm sure you would be," Mello says.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. You would be good at it. You'd be teaching it after your first semester so the boredom didn't kill you."

Matt shakes his head. "I don't think it would be boring--"

"I mean being at a university," Mello says.

No, it might be nice, Matt thinks, to meet some normal people my age. Or would it. Do I like normal people? Or flamboyant assholes like you? "I think you're the one that's bored here," Matt says.

"Often."

"So, when this is all done, what are you going to do?" Matt asks. The music is faster, and Matt has slid his barstool closer to Mello's.

Mello looks at the mirrored wall in front of them.

"What?" Matt asks.

"Work on the cases that L should be in charge of," Mello says.

"Do you even know what you would actually do?" Matt cocks his head. 

Mello squints. "It depends on the cases."

"Isn't the whole point to make it so there are less cases?" Matt says.

"You almost sound like Kira when you put it that way," Mello sips his drink again.

Matt shakes his head. "I don't think killing people off is the way to go about that."

"There's always going to be sick people who crop up," Mello says, "who'll do whatever they have to do to get what they want and control people."

"Yeah," Matt says, the alcohol haze thickening. I'm not so sure you're not one of them, too, he thinks. "And I think you like having them around. So you don't get bored."

"What are you--"

"I mean, it's all a game, isn't it?" Matt says. He takes a long sip. "It's one big game. L used to be the best player, and now Kira's the best player, and one by one he's picked off all the other good players."

"It's not a fucking game," Mello says.

"But you still plan to win, don't you?" 

"Matt, it's not a fucking game. A game is all made up. This is as real as it gets. Of course you would call it a game, you think of everything as a game. You still keep that little thing with you? That little console you never put down?"

"I still have it," Matt says.

"Well put it the fuck away while you're out here," Mello says. "And focus on reality--"

"You used to love stuff that was made up," Matt says, before he can stop himself. 

Mello sits still for a second.

"All the time, remember? You used to make stuff up all the time, you used to write stories and plays and fucking puppet shows, do you remember that? You remember those weird books L gave us, with all the ghost stories, all that made up stuff? You used to love it." The glasses are nearly empty again. "Now you have no idea what you're going to do next."

Mello fumes.

"Mel, come on," Matt says. "Isn't that how they found you in the first place? Because you were good at making stuff up?"

Mello rolls his eyes. "I'm going to go take a leak."

**

Mello laces his pants back up and walks to the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror. 

Matt had pissed him off like no other person could. Except, perhaps, Aiko. No one else was sharp enough to know, or cared enough to find out, what grated against Mello's consciousness. 

If I'm going to win, it's not because it's a game. It's because it's a battle. 

Mello pushes open the door and the music booms. He stops and looks at Matt from across the room, sitting hunched over his stool, nursing another drink. He studies the lines of Matt's profile and an uneasy feeling wells up in his gut. 

If I didn't know him, I'd probably try to pick him up, Mello realizes. Everyone else in here is loud and proud, but you look totally lost. And that makes you interesting.

Mello crosses his arms. He's never tried his suite of seduction hacks on anyone under forty. 

I could do it if I wanted to, he thinks. Of course I could. I just have more important things to do. Nobody turns me down. I can make myself into whatever they want me to be, whatever gets them hooked. I'm a fucking chameleon.

So what does Matt want?

The bartender says something to Matt, and Matt flinches. He draws back awkwardly on the stool as the other man talks to him. 

It doesn't matter what Matt wants, he's not a client. He's an accomplice.

Mello walks back up to the bar. 

Oh, but it should be obvious, Mello thinks. Matt's a gamer. He wants to play.

"It's going to get crowded in here, you want to get a couch?" Mello nods in the direction of the DJ booth and grabs his jacket. The couches lay arranged around low tables. Sheer fabric curtains hang between them, catching the red and pink light. 

"Uh, sure." Matt hands him another new drink and follows him to a couch in the corner of the room. Most of the others are already occupied. 

A woman in a leather bustier walks by with a tray of shot glasses. Mello plucks two off the tray and hands one to Matt. They sit down, each with a glass in each hand.

"Welcome to LA," Mello says.

"Cheers." 

The first shot of the night always has a nice bite to it. Mello half expects Matt to sputter out a cough or ask for a chaser. He doesn't. 

Matt notices Mello looking at him. "You've had some practice," he says.

"So have you."

"Olga drinks too much," Matt says.

"According to whom?" Mello scoffs.

"Everyone I met in Zurich. But they can't touch her. She still runs circles around everyone at Kreuz--"

"So she still does her job better than everyone else?"

"Well, yeah."

"Then it's not too much," Mello says with a grin. He stretches his arms over his head and lets Matt's eyes drift to his waist. He leans back on the couch and sets his feet up on the table. 

No, if you're still sharper than everyone else around you, it's not too much.

It's getting to be the ideal time of night when ideas flow. Mello watched his clients get dull and sloppy on wine and sake, during dinners where they paid for his company. But alcohol makes him feel crisp. Free. Fearless.

"Never do a scene or drive when you've had something to drink," Aiko warned him. "But you should find out what your tolerance is. And build it up." She slid a cup of sake to him across the table. "And learn to drink things without making a face."

Mello laughed. How hard can it be? But he nearly spit the drink all over Aiko.

"You're going to have clients who are going to want to drink with you afterward," she said. "Or just to drink, because they're lonely. You make sure they're always a drink or two ahead of you. And you watch the clock."

Mello isn't wearing a watch. He had left time for Matt to sleep and break into the laptop. They can take a night off and still come out on schedule.

More people begin to fill the floor in front of the DJ booth and in the spaces around the couches. Mello lies back, but Matt still sits hunched forward. Mello reaches for Matt's shoulder and pulls him back.

"What the--"

"Matt," Mello says. "Relax."

Matt looks confused.

"You look like your back hurts, sitting like that."

Matt laughs uneasily. He leans back, a few inches away from the crook of Mello's arm. "It's uh, getting crowded in here."

"Yeah, well, don't worry, they don't bite," Mello says. "Unless you ask them politely."

"How did you...how did you even get into all of...this?" Matt waves his hand around.

Mello shrugs and it creeps his arm a little closer to Matt's shoulders. "Prime blackmail material. All kinds of people are into all kinds of weird shit, stuff that would ruin their jobs if people knew about it."

Maybe one day Mello will tell Matt about being broke, his visa expired and his documents no longer renewed by the British government, fucking a businessman in an airport hotel and stealing the man's identity. The target was young and not completely revolting. Mello decided he was neither ashamed nor afraid. It had been too easy. It had been all downhill or uphill from there, depending on who you asked.

"Yeah...I guess that makes sense," Matt says.

"So what kind of fucked up stuff are you into these days?" Mello ruffles Matt's hair and Matt flinches.

"What?"

Mello laughs. "Jesus, Matt, I'm kidding."

Matt shakes his head. He waves to a waitress walking by and grabs another shot glass from her tray. 

Mello punches Matt's shoulder. "Hey, get me one."

"Here." Matt swipes another glass. He takes the shot and watches a couple walk by: a woman with her partner in a mask, on a long chain leash. "Yeah..," Matt says, "I'm, uh...not so adventurous as your friends here."

Mello sits right up next to Matt, their thighs and shoulders touching. With the loud music, they have to lean in close to hear each other. He had used that to great effect with previous clients.

Why do I keep acting like he's a client? 

Mello sets the little glass back on the table. 

Am I that bored?

Or is it just habit? 

Matt's grip on his glass seems tight. But it doesn't seem to be the eccentric figures in the room that are making him nervous. Matt doesn't look enthusiastic about their surroundings, but not particularly judgmental, either. Which leaves the two of them.

Rashad looms over them. "What do you need, beautiful?" he says to Mello.

Mello raises his half-full glass. "Absolutely nothing." He cocks his head. "What do you need?"

Rashad sinks down into the couch next to them and fans himself dramatically. "Cecile and Dirk want me to go to a rally," he says, drawing out the words.

"Psh. For what?"

"For Derek Calson," Rashad says.

"The activist?" Mello squints.

"Who's Derek Calson?" Matt asks.

"He's an anti-death penalty activist," Rashad says. "Huge in Berkeley. He was a death row prisoner who got exonerated, this was back in the eighties, baby. Wrongfully accused."

"He heads up an anti-Kira movement," Mello says. "But I thought he got shut down."

"No, he's still out there doing his thing. But anyways, they want the state government to make a statement against Kira, and you know all the gun nuts from the boondocks all support Kira, and lord have mercy, I am just so tired of this whole rigamarole, I don't even know what to do."

"I can't even imagine a rally about that in the UK," Matt says. "It's all so underground now. Everyone's so afraid..."

"I don't know which side of this whole business you come down on, baby," Rashad points his fan at Matt. "But I think Kira is a big old pile of horse shit." He crosses one long, gleaming leg over the other. "Now we all have people we want to get rid of. Jesus knows, I'd love to stick it to my father. But justice changes, baby. Fifty years ago you'd get thrown in jail for dressing like me." He shrugs and the strap of his gown slips. "Two days ago, an old school buddy of mine had a heart attack in a jail cell in Tuscon." Rashad leans closer. "He sold weed and ecstasy to college kids. Now I get it, it was against the law, but baby, I never heard of anybody who died form a goddamn joint."

"That's awful," Matt says. 

"Don't go to the rally," Mello says. "It'll be a shitshow."

"I know it," Rashad says. "And all those cameras. And lordy, I have enough of a shitshow to deal with here every night."

"Don't be so humble, this place is doing great," Mello says. 

A woman in a velvet smoking jacket calls for Rashad. 

"Mercy. My presence is needed elsewhere." He stands up dramatically.

"Sweep 'em off their feet," Mello says.

Rashad gives him a glittery wink. 

Mello's eyes follow Rashad back onto the crowded floor. Then he stares into space for a moment. "I hate it," he says, his voice ominous and low, "the way people say Kira is 'justice.' I know way too many people who have had friends die in prison. What's fucking just about killing someone off who's already being punished? It's what the fucking courts are for."

"Mel, everything you do is illegal," Matt says.

"No, most of what I do is illegal. But I only hurt people who are asking for it...in every sense of the term."

Matt turns to him, their faces close. "If you had Kira's power, would you use it?"

"Of course I fucking would. To get rid of Kira. And anyone who tried to stop me."

"And then what?"

"Nobody should have that kind of power," Mello says. 

"Why? Because it makes things unfair?"

"You're talking about it like it's a game again," Mello says. "Everything is unfair. It always has been unfair. It's not fair for L to be gone, it's not fair fo Ai--" Mello catches himself, "It's not fair for all these other people. It's never going to be fair, I don't care about making things fair." He sips his cocktail again. 

"So you don't care about fairness, but you don't like people calling Kira 'justice.'" Matt contemplates his glass.

Mello scowls. "You know what I hate?"

"Besides pretty much everything?" 

"I hate that people are afraid. There's enough random, horrible shit in life to be afraid of without being afraid to speak your mind about things. That's part of why I came out here, you know. People aren't too afraid yet to stand up to Kira. Everyone in Japan is a fucking sheep about Kira. Germany finally changed their laws about releasing names for misdemeanor offenders, but China and Russia are ready to hand over records of everyone who's ever been arrested to anyone who wants them. Everyone on the TV debates here is an absolute fucking moron, but at least they still have them."

Mello sets his empty glass back down. His body feels pleasantly light. "So. What about you? If you had Kira's power, would you use it?"

"No," Matt says. "I don't think it would change anything. You could take out a head of a terror cell, maybe, but they'd just replace them. Or eliminate some dictator, but someone else just as bad might step in. The crime statistics aren't that good, you know."

"Yeah."

"I was going to say--"

"What?"

Matt shakes his head. "I was going to say it changes the nature of the game."

"Psh." Mello swats Matt's shoulder.

"It does, though! All it's done is eliminate competition and get rid of the smaller players. It just favors the ones who are better at hiding. People still do all the same shit, they just hide it better."

Then maybe you know more about this than I realized, Mello thinks. "He's a vaccum cleaner."

"A what?"

"Kira just sucks up people from prisons, he just rides on other people's work."

"Well that isn't fair, is it?" Matt grins.

Mello rolls his eyes and sighs. "It's fucking lazy, is what it is."

Mello notices the way Matt smells. Something like almond, cedar, and pine. He must have been using the same cheap drugstore shampoo for the last four years. It takes Mello back to a blanket fort at Wammy's, laying with his head next to Matt's. The glow of Matt's GameBoy screen gave Mello just enough light to write by. With the exception of Aiko, Mello realizes he hasn't laid down next to another person since. He never stays over with clients, even when they offer to pay extra. He's never wanted to.

Matt sinks back into the couch.

"What's up?" Mello asks.

"Mm...just starting to feel it."

"Already?" 

"I don't run on vodka and chocolate like you do," Matt says with a grin.

"Fuck," Mello says.

"What?"

"I meant to pick up chocolate vodka before you got here."

"You're kidding," Matt says. 

Mello turns to him, their faces close. "I would never joke about something like that."

Matt laughs and Mello's face cracks into a wide smile, involuntarily. It feels strange to the muscles in his face, no longer used to anything more than a smirk. 

Don't let it distract you.

But it does distract him, the way Matt brushes his hair out of his face, the heat radiating from his body. 

Mello wants another drink. Yes. The best possible thing. The first glass when he gets home and sets to work makes him feel relaxed and sharp at the same time, open to whatever ideas might come his way. The second and third let him completely unwind after a long day of pretending to give a shit about another person's feelings. The fourth lets him sleep. 

Sleep, before you can miss anyone. Before it distracts you.

A waitress in a chain-mail halter top approaches them. "You two want refills?"

Mello gives her a thumbs up. Two fresh Red Squares appear before them. 

Mello clinks his glass against Matt's. "I thought you said weren't keeping up with me."

"Yeah, after this, I'm not," Matt says.

"You're so responsible," Mello says. "Glad I hired you."

Matt shakes his head. "Somebody has to keep you in line."

"I never stay between the lines," Mello says.

"Yeah," Matt says with a wistful smile. "I remember. Nobody can destroy a coloring book like you can."

Mello laughs out loud in spite of himself. 

Fuck, he realizes. I hired Matt. If I'm paying, that makes me the client. 

And I don't want to need you for anything but work.

+

They were speaking English. Mello didn't fully understand them. Later, he could piece together what the conversation might have been.

"You don't have to come, you know. Roger and I can go get him," Watari would have said.

"I know, but I want a break between cases. And it's on the way back to London anyways."

Mello sat in a cafe at Charles de Gaulle airport, tired and confused after the flight from Minsk, still not fully understanding he would never see Magda again. His feet didn't touch the floor.

"This is called a 'macaron,'" L said in Russian. "Do you want to try it?" 

Mello nodded. It was good. Very good. Whatever was happening, it meant very good food. Mello was on board with this.

"Ryuzaki, don't give him too much sugar, he won't sleep," Watari must have said.

"Trust me, he will be out like a light." L turned to Mello. "Misha, do you want to sit next to me on the flight to London?"

"Yes," Mello said.

"We should give him an alias soon," Watari said.

"We will. See what kind of person he is first," L said. He reached into his canvas satchel and pulled out a book of Aesop's fables. "This is for you," he said. He slid the book across the table to Mello.

Mello's eyes widened. A gift. For him. A book. That he didn't have to share.

"It's in English," L said. "Do you want to learn to read it?"

Mello nodded.

"Madga taught you Polish, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Well, Watari and I are going to teach you English. One day you'll be able to read in lots of different languages."

Mello nodded. "Ryuzaki...how do you say 'macaron' in English?"

L laughed. "It's called the same thing. Macaron."

Mello grinned and reached for another from the box. Watari raised an eyebrow.

Mello studied the book on the flight, examining each word, hungry to discern the meaning. Eventually it tumbled from his hands and he fell asleep with his head against L's arm. 

+

A heavy haze hangs over Matt's body five drinks in. 

He keeps touching me, Matt thinks. It's like he's testing me. Or is he?

Matt yawns. "Jet lag's a bitch," he says.

Mello reaches over and drapes his arm across Matt's shoulders. Matt doesn't shove him away. 

If all you care about is beating Kira, then what do you want with me?

Matt rests his head against Mello's shoulder. He feels like he shouldn't, but the gravity of alcohol compels him. And it's been so long.

You're not that focused, Matt thinks. You say you're bored, but I think you secretly love it here. You fit right in with all these glossy, weird, sexy people. 

You never bring anyone here, but you're here with me, and all these people are seeing you like this...

It's part of your plan, isn't it. I'm some kind of smokescreen. 

Matt sighs. Maybe it's still worth it, to play a part. Maybe it's better than nothing. 

The woman in the velvet jacket dashes up to their table. "Birthday shots!" she shouts.

"Whose birthday is it?" Mello asks.

"Mine!" She hands them each another shot glass.

"I can't," Matt says, his voice thin, as the woman walks off.

"I'll have yours," Mello says.

Here we go, Matt thinks. 

The dance floor is packed and people press in around them. A setup of aerial silks hangs over the stage next to the DJ booth, and two performers writhe and twist in the air. Mello takes his shot and leaves Matt's on the table in front of him. He leaves his arm around Matt.

Mello...what do you want with me?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been the worst about replying to comments and updating, but I'm going to do both, I promise! Please enjoy this sprawling monstrosity of a chapter.

"Hey!" Near knocked on the bathroom door. "Don't use up all the hot water!"

"Near, go away!" Mello yelled over the sound of the shower. You little piece of shit, he thought. You give it two more years and you won't want to get out of the shower, either. 

Mello's hand was wrapped around his erect cock, his wet hair hung in his face. 

Near. What would shut you up? My cock in your ass and my fingers in your mouth, Mello thought. The scene painted itself in Mello's mind. Everyone else has gone into town and it's just you and me left in the house. 

Mello gripped himself tighter and pumped himself harder, his fingers slick with conditioner.

Yeah. That's what you get for interrupting me. You say you want me to stop, but we both know you're lying. You know you want it. And you won't admit it. Because if I have something you want, I can take it away from you. I can make you want it. 

Mello pictured himself with one hand around the base of Near's neck, the other on the small of his back, pounding into him.

Squeal all you want, nobody can hear you. You're mine, now. 

He let out a cruel little laugh.

"What's so funny?" Near asked through the door. 

Mello's body went rigid. "Near, what the fuck? I told you to go away!" Mello felt himself start to go flaccid. 

No. Fuck. I was so close. Think of something else. 

An image of Matt flickered in Mello's mind.

No. Someone else. Anyone else.

That redhead from the video last night. Yeah. He'll do.

It had taken an week of experimenting with a local area network he had set up with Matt for Mello to be completely, unfailingly certain he could cover his digital tracks. But after all, if they were training to be the world's greatest detectives, wouldn't it be natural for them to have their own things to hide, even from the chaperones who were always watching?

Mello crept down the empty, silent hallway to the library late one night, about three months before L's death. His bathrobe pockets were stuffed with tissues. He carried a laptop, a modified router, and an ethernet cable under his arm. Time to look for new material. His encrypted folder of photos was getting stale. 

He opened the door and saw a blue glow coming from the corner of the room. A sound of muffled laughter. Dana sat in an armchair with her own computer on her lap, her robe pulled down around her shoulders, her long red hair just covering her breasts. She froze when she saw Mello.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed more than whispered. She plucked out one earbud. 

"What are you doing here?" Mello scowled. "Who the hell are you talking to?"

"It's none of your business," Dana said. She drew her robe tightly around her. 

Mello rolled his eyes and scoffed. 

"Don't tell Watari," she said. 

"I won't if you won't," Mello said. He started walking toward the other corner of the library.

"Fine. But I don't want to hear you," Dana said.

"I don't want to hear you either."

"Put on headphones."

"Fine." Mello avoided the sound of Dana's twittery laugh and the moaning that he would have found obnoxiously theatrical, even toned down to avoid getting caught. Mello sat down behind a set of bookcases and set up his computer for maximum privacy. He found a new video with the same actors he liked. He left one headphone out to monitor his own sounds, to listen out for footsteps. 

Dana, you little bitch. If you get us caught, I swear to god, I'll kill you. 

He felt his stomach turn as the video loaded. Seriously, fuck you for using up all the bandwidth on your Skype call. Jesus. You lucky bitch. 

You have someone to talk to. 

Matt slept like a rock in the shared room down the hall. Mello, on the other hand, was a light sleeper. On occasion he looked over at the twin bed next to his and noticed the faint gray light from the window outlining Matt's silhouette.

Don't.

He's like your brother. And you have to live with him. Don't make it fucking awkward. Get it together, just think about something else. Besides, he probably doesn't even like guys anyway. 

One rumor about L was that he was impervious to seduction. Enemy agents had tried and failed to distract him. Matt, Near, and Olga were like L in that regard. They seemed completely oblivious, totally disinterested in sex. Or were they just better at hiding it? That thought made Mello cringe. He noticed the way Linda's eyes followed Dana, and the way Dana's followed tall, Nigerian Anthony, two years their senior; the way Anthony looked at lean, androgynous Tran; the way Tran sometimes looked at Linda. No one ever seemed to look at Mello.

But who would have looked? The only good thing about living in the countryside was finding a nice tree to write under, and having no one to distract you. 

I could get on message boards, and lie about my age. I could steal one of the cameras. I could show off. I could find somebody. I have all kinds of lies I could tell. Stories I could make up. People I could be. I'm a good actor, I know it. 

But they're not allowed to be photographed, and if some enemy was going to get a hold of Mello's likeness, he didn't want it to be through this. 

Mello contented himself with his videos instead. 

The pretty redhead wore a red silk rope harness and a blindfold, his bound hands tied to a hook hanging from the ceiling of the set. The top unlaced his shiny vinyl pants and liberated a cartoonishly huge erection. I could get pants like that, Mello thought. I could get rope like that.

But there remained the problem of who to use it on. 

Mello took screen captures; shitty, grainy images, but good enough. He let the video play through, grit his teeth, and came in a handful of tissues. He let his body relax into the armchair and let the feeling of relief sweep over him. 

Then the curdle of dread set in. First, the prospect of getting back to the room, unnoticed. Then, the subtle, haunting questions that Mello typically tried to shut out of his mind: am I the man hanging by his wrists, or the man tormenting him? Am I both of them? Can you even do that? Am I crazy? Do I want to hurt people? Do I want people to hurt me?

Mello caught an unintended glance of gleaming, topless Dana on his way out and scowled. Their late-night library stalemate would last until the day before Mello left. 

"You have to tell me when you're going to use the library," Mello said.

"No I don't, are you kidding me?" Dana glared at him. 

But Dana was a better lookout than Mello thought, helping him avoid a sleepwalking Near, flipping a circuit to distract an approaching Watari and buy them time to slip back to their rooms. 

Mello turned the door handle as silently as he could and walked softly to avoid waking Matt, his groin sore from being overworked. He glanced at the figure across from him and noticed the subtle rise and fall of his ribcage. He let out a heavy sigh and climbed back in bed. 

Don't.

+

Jesus, are we going to talk to these people all night? 

Matt cracks his back when he stretches. 

How could I forget you only have two modes, Matt thinks: 'silent sulking', and 'won't shut up.'

Rashad and one of his proteges sit on the couch adjacent from Mello and Matt. The writhing crowd snakes its way in front of them. Matt's sobriety is slowly returning, but his energy is not. Mello is eight shots in. 

"Psh. If I were against it, I wouldn't come to your fucking bar." Mello waves his glass around, the remainder of the drink threatens to slosh out the sides. "You think I'd be friends with this human flamingo?" He points at Rashad. "I'm just saying it's not my taste. There's a difference."

Mello, I swear to god, if you get in a fight with a drag queen, we are leaving immediately. 

"Baby, you would be a champion at drag. I mean, look at you," Rashad's companion says. He flips his long pink wig dramatically.

Mello rolls his eyes. "Shut up, Tyler."

The man crosses his arms. "Honey, in this outfit, it's Tamika." Then he grins. "I'm serious. I've seen you dance."

Matt turns to Mello. "You dance?"

"What? Sometimes," Mello says.

"I'm having a hard time picturing this," Matt says.

"I just think you have potential and you're not even exploring it. We have auditions for Jailbait Divas next week," Tyler says.

Rashad tosses his head back and cackles; Matt crumples over with laughter. Mello elbows Matt in the ribs.

"Hey!" Matt recoils. You don't like being laughed at, do you, Mel?

"No, no. You won't catch this kid at any audition in the city," Rashad says. "Goddamn shame, too. Ai-chan always told you to be a model, you never did listen. Mellie here's too busy getting every sad businessman in the state wrapped around his little finger. You got a wait list a mile long by now, don't you, honey?"

Mello just glares at Rashad.

"You never quit. I don't know why you taking a break all of a sudden with Mr. Jet Lag here, if you didn't even come here to dance. I never see you stick around this long." Rashad sips his martini. "Makes it seem like something's up." He raises a perfectly-arched eyebrow. 

"Yeah, something is up," Mello growls. He leans over Rashad. "You watch the news and you'll see what's--" 

Matt yanks the collar of Mello's vest and pulls him back onto the couch. "What the fuck are you doing?" he whispers into Mello's ear. "Are you trying to get us caught?"

"Jesus, Matt, relax," Mello swats Matt's hands away. 

"No, you relax," Matt hisses. "You're drunk and you're acting like an idiot."

"No I'm not--"

"You had eight shots!" Matt grips Mello's shoulders. "You're not a fucking robot, Mel. You think you're above getting sloppy and letting something slip?"

Mello grabs Matt's wrists and stares him in the face. Even in the low light, Matt can discern the redness to Mello's eyes.

Matt squints. "You never drink like this, do you?" he half-whispers to Mello, as if the dense wall of music wouldn't keep the others from hearing.

"What?" Mello glares at him. He doesn't let go. "Yeah, I do, on special occasions--"

"Are you doing this because I'm here?"

"No," Mello says. He flings Matt's hands away again.

"Uh-oh, domestic disturbance," Tyler croons. 

"Fuck off, Tamika." Mello glares at him.

Tyler continues to laugh. 

"Somebody take this hot mess home and put him to bed," Rashad says. "I never seen you like this, flailing around like a wet leaf--"

"I haven't even seen you here since they got Aiko," Tyler says.

Mello sits frozen, livid on the couch, his gaze fixed on Tyler.

"Who's Aiko?" Matt asks.

Mello ignores him and stands up again.

"Mel, hey," Matt gets up and plants his hand on Mello's upper back. "Let's go back. I'm fucking drained, all right? I need to sleep."

"What?"

"Listen, I know you could do this all night, but I'm hitting the wall here. I'm dead in the water. I got to--"

"Jesus, Matt, don't say that."

"What?"

"The whole...dead thing...you know what, never mind, let's go." He reaches for Matt's wrist.

"Hey, what about the drinks?" Matt reaches for his wallet.

"Don't worry about it, baby." Rashad towers over them when he stands up. "Your little friend here's got a tab that never closes."

Mello stifles a hiccup. He slips his jacket back on.

Rashad winks at Matt again. "Come back and see me some time."

"Come to the audition!" Tyler shouts as Mello drags Matt through the crowd. Mello flips him off without looking back. 

Mello collapses into a cab and Matt slides in next to him. Mello mutters the address to the driver and tilts his head back, eyes shut. The neon from the windows all around them casts pink and red light on the side of his face. The feather trim on his sleeve tickles Matt's arm.

"How many animals died for your crazy-ass clothes," Matt says, more to the car than to Mello.

"Since when are you some bleeding-heart PETA nutcase?" Mello says without opening his eyes. He slurs his words slightly. Matt decides not to bring this to Mello's attention. 

"I'm not, I just think it's funny."

"I get these two queens taking the piss out of me all night, and now you too?" 

"Hey," Matt says. "You said they were your friends."

"They are." Mello rolls his head to the side, away from Matt. 

Matt sighs. Just wake up before we have to get out of the car, he thinks. But even he is clinging to awareness. Fatigue sinks into him like black ink. 

This late at night, there's barely any traffic. Matt watches the silhouettes of palms, faint against the dark sky, that pass by the windows. 

As a kid, Mello had been teased a handful of times for looking like a girl, with the hair he refused to cut. Mello kicked the others in the shins, something Matt figured he learned to do in Belarus. It had shut them up. 

You've warmed up to it, now, though, Matt thinks. You're one big, flaming, shiny, androgynous mess. It's nothing if not interesting. 

Matt's wrist tingles. He had kind of liked the feeling of it, Mello pulling him through the crowd. In a way, it reminded him of being a kid, always being paired up. But then, Matt realized he also liked the feeling of being taken somewhere. Included.

They drive past endless billboards for movies, signs for auditions tacked to telephone poles. Everyone here wants to be something, don't they, Matt thinks. What about you, Mel? What's waiting for you after this? Do you really want to live behind some screen, with your voice warped out, solving cases? I don't think you do. I think you like attention way too much.

Mello lies silently in the seat next to him. Matt studies the contour of his profile, sharper and more handsome than he remembers. 

And what about me. What I do even expect to get out of all this? Am I just going to waste away in front of a screen?

Matt fidgets in his seat. He doesn't want the two of them to both be asleep when they reach the complex. 

But games are more fun when you have the right people to play with. That changes everything. 

The driver pulls in to the dark courtyard in front of the building. Matt plucks a twenty dollar bill from his wallet and hands it to him. 

"Mel. Hey. We're here." Matt brushes his shoulder.

Mello drags himself out of the car and up the stairs like the reanimated dead. 

You idiot, Matt thinks. How much of tonight are you even going to remember tomorrow? Or if it's a night off, do you think you even need to remember it?

Mello jams the key in the door and wrenches it open. He wanders into the kitchen.

Matt heads for the bedroom. He brought almost nothing with him, a few changes of clothes, his laptop, his Game Boy. Everything else he left taped up in boxes in the mostly empty flat. He told the landlord to sublet the unit while he was gone. 

Matt changes into a clean t-shirt and boxers. He brushes his teeth and stares at himself in the mirror. The dark circles under his eyes haven't gone away yet. Well, better luck in the morning. 

But Matt freezes when he walks out of the bathroom. Mello lies face-down on the bed in a pair of dark red boxers, on top of the blankets with his eyes shut. He clutches one of the pillows. 

"Mel?"

There's no answer. 

Matt walks over to him. He gives him a little shake. Nothing. Matt can't tell if he's blacked out, or just asleep. 

Fuck.

Matt really doesn't want to sleep on the couch. Or the floor. He groans and switches off the lamp on the table. He peels open the sheets, lies down and stretches out next to Mello. 

You shithead. You totally said you were sleeping on the couch, did you even remember? At least it's a double bed, Matt thinks. Maybe I'll wake up first and he'll never know. 

Matt fidgets. He begs his body to fall asleep. The last time he fell asleep with another person next to him, he and Mello were twelve years old, in a blanket fort in the middle of the shared little room. It didn't seem weird. A fort's not a bed, right?

I should make something up, Matt thinks. Tell Mello he talks in his sleep, or tell him he sleepwalks.

The thought makes him grin. 

Under the hum of the air conditioner sitting in the window, Matt can just detect the sound of Mello breathing. It's strangely comforting, he realizes, although they were never close enough to each other for Matt to hear it when they lived together. He used to hear Mello getting up in the middle of the night all the time, but he always pretended not to notice. 

As kids, Matt assumed Mello was simply wandering around the house when no one would bother him, thinking up ideas. Matt would later hear the scribble of a pencil on paper and see the glow of the battery-powered lantern from underneath Mello's bedsheet, pulled over his head. As they got older, Matt had other theories. He himself felt no inclination to get up yet . It wasn't until after Mello ran away that Matt began to fantasize about other people. Which was better, blonde girls or blonde boys? By then he had the room to himself to wonder, and let his imagination run wild. 

In the low light, Mello looks still, but not peaceful. Matt reaches out his hand, then draws back.

No, if he wakes up, he'll flip a shit. I'm too tired to be yelled at. But maybe he should flip out, for not taking the couch like he said.

But he seemed perfectly happy with his arm around my shoulder at Rashad's. 

Matt wonders if he should have moved, spoken up, said something. Instead he just went with it, let the haze of the drinks pin him down. The weight and the heat of Mello's arm had been too pleasant to protest.

Matt reaches over again and touches Mello's hair, extremely lightly. Mello doesn't stir. Matt does it again, a few light, slow strokes. The expression on Mello's face softens ever so slightly.

"Good night," Matt whispers.

+

Somewhere in the distance, an organ plays. Footsteps echo softly off the stone floors. Someone is whispering. Confessions or prayers, probably.

Mello lies on a divan in a small room. Sunlight pours in through a stained glass window. Someone is stroking his hair. 

Magda?

Mello's eyes don't open easily. His awareness returns to the room. 

Matt lies on his side, facing away from him. Mello cracks a smile. 

I knew you wouldn't take the couch.

Mello's joints pop and crack as he yawns and stretches. His limbs still ache with fatigue from the night of drinking. But this isn't the dreaded hangover Aiko warned him about. Mello is convinced it'll never happen. 

He could deal without feeling like lead, though. 

Mello carries his body into the kitchen. His stomach growls. 

Already?

Mello pulls another can of Red Bull from the refrigerator. He opens the cabinet. There's a box of chocolate pop tarts. He takes one out and examines it. What else did Matt bring?

He switches on the long-neglected toaster and slides in two frozen chocolate-chip waffles. Chocolate syrup waits for them on the counter. 

Damn it, Mello thinks. He's good.

"You should know what your client wants," Aiko said. "You should know before he even knows. You should know what he says he wants, and what he doesn't want to admit."

Mello doesn't want to think about Aiko. But hadn't she also said a little hair of the dog would stave off a hangover? Not that Mello has one. 

He pours the Red Bull in a glass and adds a shot of vodka. Matt's going to take the piss out of me for this, isn't he? Well it's not like he has to know there's vodka in it. Unless he can smell it...

Jesus, it doesn't matter what Matt thinks. 

Mello opens his laptop and checks Takimura's cracked email account. But the Japanese characters are just unfriendly squiggles to his tired brain. He scowls. He sets the computer on the kitchen table and sits crouching with his feet on the edge of the chair. There we go. That's better.

There's a response from a woman who is very much not Takimura's wife. That's good. An anchor for blackmail. And yes...a plan to go see her. Takimura's security detail won't be with him. He'll be alone. Which means...

The toaster dings and Mello snaps out of his trance. He plucks out the waffles with a fork and lays them on a plate with the pop tart. He pours a spiral of syrup over it all when he hears footsteps behind him. He smells smoke.

"Oh. You're awake," Mello says.

"Awake is a relative term," Matt says, lit cigarette in hand. He opens the refrigerator and takes out a carton of chocolate milk. He pours himself a glass.

Is he going to say something about the bed?

Matt sinks into the chair across from Mello. His blue eyes look out of little purple caverns. Mello feels a twinge of pity, and the unfamiliarity of it is shocking.

"What?" Matt asks.

"Read this," Mello says. He slides the computer across the table and takes a bite of waffle.

"Man, I've let my Japanese get rusty," Matt says. He squints at the screen.

Mello kicks him under the table. "Well fucking don't," he says in Japanese. "Because the way things are going, that's where we're headed."

"I know, I read your novel." Matt answers in Japanese and Mello smiles in spite of himself. "You've kept yours up, though."

Mello switches back to English. "Yeah, most of my clients are Japanese."

"But you don't actually talk to them that much, do you?" 

"Not if I can avoid it," Mello says. He sips his Red Square. 

"So who did you practice with?"

"It's not important. Read the fucking email."

Matt looks at the screen. "I don't really speak it much anymore," he says. "Not since you and L left."

Matt says it so casually, but the words make Mello's gut curdle. "I'm gonna get a cigarette. Read the email." He gets up and walks into the bedroom. 

A lighter lies on the night table, identical to Mello's gold one, but silver. Mello picks it up and examines the engraved initial 'M.' 

Interesting. 

He takes a cigarette from the half-empty pack lying on top of the dresser and lights it with Matt's lighter. 

Matt sits hunched over the computer when Mello walks back into the kitchen. 

"So what do you think?" Mello sits back down and taps the cigarette over the gold-edged ashtray.

"You're going to try to ambush him en route to his vacation house?" 

"That's plan A," Mello says. "Plan B is to hack the house's security system and get him there."

"You're kidding," Matt says.

"What do you mean?"

"You have a backup plan."

Mello scowls. "Psh. If it were me over there, I wouldn't fucking need one."

Matt grins. "Thought so. So you're going to want, what, maps, police activity...?"

"Yeah, Rod's man Sato has all that. I'll get it from him. I need you working on Rod's complex here first. Then I bet it'll be the same kind of deal for Takimura's house."

"All right, got it."

"I have to see what else I can get out of Asahi." Mello sinks back in his chair. "And that means seeing Ito again."

"Well no one can accuse you of not working, can they," Matt says. "Just think. When all this is over, you could be a Jailbait Diva."

"Shut the fuck up."

Matt laughs, and Mello is alarmed at how quickly his own composure changes to see it. Like being briefly pulled back in time. 

"Be nice to me, I bought you breakfast," Matt says.

"Which no one fucking asked you to do. Besides, who bought your drinks last night, hm?"

"Rashad," Matt says. "And you had twice as much to drink as I did."

Mello crosses his arms. 

Matt shuts the computer and slides it back to Mello. "I'm going to copy all this to your file, then I'm going to start on those blueprints you gave me." 

"Good."

Matt gets up and pours himself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs with extra chocolate milk over them. 

"I have to figure out a time to meet Ito," Mello says. "Fuck."

"How soon does that have to happen?"

"Next couple of days," Mello says. "We still have to go to the gun range."

"We can't just do that whenever?"

"Traffic," Mello says. "But even still, I'd rather sit in traffic on the way to the range than see this guy."

"So what's his deal? I'd say you seem to hate him, but you seem to hate everyone."

Mello rolls his eyes. "He's got a schoolboy fetish."

"Oh, god. For you?"

"No, for him. And he's sixty years old."

"Jesus, that's even worse."

They eat their breakfast while Mello talks shit about his least favorite but most useful clients. Mello keeps waiting for Matt to say something about the bed. He never does. 

+

Mello leaves to meet a client, and Matt creates a schematic for where to plant the explosives. He taps into the base's camera feed, and holy god, that's a lot of cocaine, he thinks. He recognizes a handful of characters from the folders of hidden camera images and carefully unearthed blackmail photos that Mello included in his files. 

Mello thinks you're all a load of imbeciles, but you can't be that dumb if you've carried on this long. 

The prices of most drugs skyrocketed because of Kira. Kira's most vocal opponents pointed fingers toward the surge in prescription medicine abuse that followed. Matt had noticed it in Belfast. There was no real drop in users, he thought. People just turned to different things. Legal things, especially alcohol. 

And the ones who can afford it and the ones who can hide just carry on doing what they're doing. Kira. You thinned the herd of mediocre players, but the experts are still out there. 

Matt watches a group of people load boxes into an ambulance. It must be a fake, he thinks.

Matt begins to pull in video from other cameras in areas that are still. He sets up recordings. He'll switch out the timestamps and feed the images back through the system when he and Mello arrive, create seamless loops of fake footage.

Matt sits on the couch with his computer on his lap. He looks at the map of their route for the coming night. They'll take Mello's car to a warehouse and pick up an innocuous looking foodservice truck that could plausibly be supplying one of the prisons or military bases near Rod's hideout. The C4 will come from a weapons dealer south of town. Good thing we can both drive, Matt thinks. If I stay this tired, we're going to have to take turns. 

Matt sets the alarm on his phone for an hour. He lies back down on the creaky iron bed. He doesn't want to be asleep when Mello gets back and give the impression of slacking off. But the blazing midday sun behind the blinds is still no match for the jet lag.

L never seemed to have to jet lag, Matt thinks as he dozes off. He never seemed to get tired at all. And how the hell did Mello get up before me? I figured he'd be lying in bed all day like a slug.

Matt sighs. It had been kind of nice to fall asleep with Mello next to him. 

+

Retired Lieutenant Hughes doesn't speak a word of German. Mello could speak gibberish and he's sure it would still get the man off. But Mello searches his rusty memory to find the words for a what a rotten dog the man is, how Mello intends to kill him. He stands behind Hughes who kneels on the floor and whispers the threats in his ear. One hand is clenched around the man's jaw, the other twists the ropes of his harness, gradually tighter and tighter. 

"You are a worthless piece of filth. You don't even deserve to lick the soles of my boots."

Once a month, Mrs. Hughes absconds to her favorite Santa Monica day spa while Mello takes over for the things she doesn't want to do. By the time she gets home, the rope marks on her husband's skin will be gone.

"Everyone always asks us what's our secret, twenty years of happy marriage," Hughes had said.

I literally do not care, Mello thought. Congratulations, you got another human being to tolerate you. Wow. 

If L had ever dated anyone, ever had the slightest interest in anyone else, Mello had never caught a whiff of it. Relationships always seemed like such a waste of time. Watari was a bachelor, and probably gay, Mello figured; a member of the pre-Stonewall generation who never felt any need to come out. Roger was a widow, and his brother Ivan had been divorced twice. No one Mello knew who had ever accomplished anything interesting wasted their time on a partner. Aiko and Rashad had been single themselves. 

I don't need someone to get in my way, Mello thought. Besides, everyone out here is as dumb as a fucking brick, except for a handful of screenwriters cloistered off somewhere. Who knows, maybe there are a few bright lights holed up somewhere at USC or UCLA, but they're probably no one I want to fuck.

I'll be fine, he thought. I have Aiko. She's close enough.

Mello showers off in the Hughes' marble bathroom. By now the Lieutenant knows better than to offer Mello a beer or a cigarette. Mello changes into a black t-shirt and dark gray jeans. He shoves his equipment and his envelope of cash into his backpack and lets the sun bring out the freckles on his bare arms as he drives his motorcycle home before the worst of the traffic hits. 

Mello could call Rashad. But he won't. He knows he never will, no matter how much Aiko trusted him. The thought of him knowing that much, seeing that much...Mello can't stand the thought of someone else having that kind of power. 

Mello had to hack into the prison's database to find out whether Aiko had been buried or cremated. She was cremated. The remains had been discarded..

Mello tightens his grip on the handlebars. 

Everyone I've ever let touch me is dead, he thinks. I'm like a scorpion, or some kind of venomous frog. Pick me up, and it's all over. 

+

"Is it just me, or are all the staff here staring at me?" Matt glances at the kitchen of the ramen shop, then back at Mello in the tiny wooden booth. 

"Yeah, they're looking at you," Mello says. "It's cause you're with me. Or maybe your hair stands out, I don't know." Mello swirls his iced matcha around with his straw. 

Matt was about to leave the apartment in pursuit of food when Mello got back.

"I know you photosynthesize or whatever, but I'm fucking starving. I gotta get something that isn't chocolate," Matt said. 

"That's not technically true, chocolate's a very nutritionally complete food," Mello said. 

"You are the last person I am going to take nutrition advice from."

"Come on, I'll come with you. What do you want?"

Matt shrugged. Mello drove him to the first place that came to mind. Matt likes it: busy but cozy. Pleasant except for the sensation of eyes making him shift self-consciously in his seat. 

Matt nurses a Kirin beer. "Do they know you speak Japanese?"

"Yeah. I used to when I came here with--Rashad," Mello says.

Matt cocks an eyebrow. "Rashad speaks Japanese?"

Mello shrugs. "His accent sucks, but yeah."

A waitress sets steaming bowls in front of them. Matt splits apart his chopsticks and contemplates his noodles. This would be the worst date food, he thinks. All that slurping. 

He glances up at Mello, then back at the food. Good thing this isn't a date. 

They wear plain, nondescript clothing and work boots. It's strange to Matt to see Mello dressed down, in just a t-shirt and jeans. Mello looks younger and more uncertain without his shiny garb. And yet, without it, his face speaks for itself. Matt comes to the unsettling realization that if he didn't know Mello, he would probably be too shy to approach him. 

Matt is curious about Mello's session up in Santa Monica, but he doesn't dare bring it up. When he woke up from his nap, he opened the closet door and gave a cursory glance at the piles of implements Mello hadn't taken with him.

Who the hell needs all this to have sex, he thought. Or even just to get off? Just to get laid at all every once in a while, you know, that would be great. That would be plenty. I don't need the whole damn flying circus. 

Mello gazes forlornly into his bowl.

"You ok?" Matt asks.

"Huh? Yeah," Mello says. He picks up a piece of radish. "How old we were we when L taught us to eat with chopsticks?"

"Six, I think," Matt says.

"I feel like I should remember that," Mello says.

"You just about put your eye out. I'm amazed you don't remember it," Matt says. 

"Psh."

"What did L say? Something like, 'don't do that, an eyepatch isn't a good look for you. It won't look cool, like a pirate. It'll just look dumb, like a kid who can't eat with chopsticks."

Mello laughs. A genuine, spontaneous laugh, without its typical overtone of cruelty. What a rare phenomenon, Matt thinks.

Matt wants to hear it again: Mello laughing the way they did when they were kids. He takes a bite of noodles, but his stomach feels tight and uncooperative. 

It was strange to hear Mello laugh for the first time. He was a volatile, unpredictable kid. At least, until L got back--L's first long-term stay at Wammy's when Matt and Mello were both there. L told Mello a joke in Russian. Matt didn't understand it, and Mello never explained. But Mello laughed more often after that.

"Yeah, that's, uh...that's probably why L waited a few years before he took us to Japan," Matt said.

Mello chuckles. It's close enough for Matt. "Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly it."

"I've been wanting to go back, you know," Matt says. "You know Linda's over there now?"

Mello sneers. "We haven't exactly kept in touch."

"I know," Matt says. "She's in a gallery over there now. She invited me to an opening."

"Are you going?" Mello cocks his head.

"No, because I came out here. Once all this is done...I'd like to go back and visit."

Mello looks vaguely disappointed, and Matt can't discern why. Does he think I'm interested in Linda? But why would that be disappointing...

"I mean...she is the closest thing I have to a sister," Matt adds. 

"I never thought of her that way," Mello says. He pours himself a tiny cup of sake. 

So how did you think of her, Matt wonders. And how did you think of me? Am I your brother or not?

Matt shrugs. "We got closer after you left." He shifts in his seat a little. "I had to talk to someone, you know."

Matt never perceived an inkling of remorse in Mello until now. Or is it remorse, the way he stares into the sake? 

Then Mello says something that shocks Matt. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

Matt laughs uneasily. "You do."

Mello sighs. "I'll tell you about it later."

They eat in silence for a few minutes. Matt orders another beer.

"You would like Linda's paintings," Matt says. 

Mello scoffs.

"And you would hate that you like them, because they're by Linda, and that's why you would never buy one."

"Fuck you, I'm buying one," Mello says. He takes another bite of noodles. "When this is over, I'm getting a better fucking apartment, and I'm buying one of Linda's paintings, and I'm hanging it over your desk." Mello points his chopsticks at Matt. 

My desk? In your apartment?

"She always liked you, you know," Matt says.

"Matt. I don't care."

But from the creak in Mello's voice, Matt's not so sure he believes it. 

+

A woman in a leather jacket waits in an office filled with yellow light. Wire in the window glass makes it bulletproof. Matt notices her irritated expression as he gets out of Mello's car.

She steps outside. "Took you long enough."

"This is Sandra," Mello says. 

She says nothing to Matt. They follow her into a dark garage. Matt can't tell if the embroidery on the back of Sandra's jacket is from some high end fashion label or one of the Latina gangs he spotted graffiti for outside Rashad's. 

She flips a switch and fluorescent bars reluctantly flicker to life. A nondescript ten-foot truck stands next to an ambulance. Matt wonders if it's the same one he saw on the video, if the back is filled with plastic-wrapped cocaine bricks. 

Sandra pulls a set of keys off a hook and tosses them to Mello. 

"This thing got fuel?" he asks.

"Yeah, I topped off for you." 

"All right."

"What time you coming back?" Sandra asks.

Mello looks at Matt. "If we work fast, we'll be back by two."

"Ok, fine. You just leave through that door on the way out and lock it behind you." She nods to the back corner of the garage. Then, to Matt's surprise, she gives Mello a little side-hug before she walks back out.

Matt laughs. "What was that about?"

They climb into the cab of the truck. 

"I got rid of some people for her," Mello says.

Matt is silent for a moment.

"I got them arrested," Mello says, "I didn't fucking shoot them."

Matt sighs as Mello hunts for something in his backpack. "Have you ever shot anyone?"

"Not yet," Mello said. "There's a long list people of I'd like to." He sticks a tape deck adapter into the front console and hooks up an MP3 player to it. Distorted chords play through the speakers.

"What is this?"

"Pavement," Mello said.

Matt wonders why Mello brought music. The drive isn't that long, is it? Does Mello just not want to talk to me? Or is it something he needs?

Matt listens to the swirling, decaying guitars. 

"Sandra's backup, by the way," Mello says. "Emergency transport. If something goes wrong, we give her a call."

"I still can't believe you have backup," Matt says.

"Yeah, neither can I, but some people like to feel helpful."

They creep through the city and the truck lurches as it stops. It makes Matt nauseous. When they reach the next warehouse, stacks of shipping containers covered in Chinese writing create a maze of walls for them to navigate. The men who meet them seem to speak no English, or at least, they make no attempt to. 

"You are Michael?" A gray-haired woman asks in a heavy accent.

Mello nods and hands her an envelope. The woman examines it and smiles. She yells something to the others and they begin to load the back of the truck. 

The sky is red over the desert and the scenery turns more desolate the farther they drive. Mello seems glazed over. The music grinds on. The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine form the soundtrack for the sunset hellscape in front of them. 

"You want me to drive?" Matt asks.

"What?" 

"You seem tired."

"I'm fine. You can drive on the way back if you want." Mello runs his hand through his hair. "When'd you get your license?"

"Two years ago. Ivan took us to practice in Italy." Roger's brother was a racing nut and a car collector. He had happily taken it upon himself to give the Wammy's children driving lessons. 

"Supposed to be shit driving there," Mello says.

"Yeah, but it's better than the traffic here," Matt says. "Besides, now I can handle anything."

"Oh, can you?"

"You bet," Matt says.

Mello grins and looks at him. "I'm going to hold you to that. All right, you have to drive back, now."

"Piece of cake, this time of night," Matt says.

"This thing's a bucket of bolts. It's like driving a fucking boat."

"Have you ever even been on a boat?" Matt asks.

Mello scoffs. "Yeah. That time in Lugano."

"If Ivan let you sail that thing, we would have all drowned," Matt says.

"And he let you drive his cars?" Mello asks.

"Some of them, yeah," Matt says. He grins wide. "He let me drive the '68 Camaro. I fucking love that car."

"Good for you," Mello says. 

Matt opens a fresh pack of cigarettes. Mello says nothing, he just reaches his hand out. Matt laughs. 

+

The boxes are heavier than Matt expected. He tries not to struggle as he carries them out of the truck. But Mello looks like he's fighting to maintain composure, too, and Matt finds it endearing. A thin layer of sweat coats his skin by the time they finish unloading everything--all but one box, left behind to test in a stretch of empty desert. 

Mello takes a bandana out of his backpack and ties it around his head.

Matt laughs. "You look ridiculous."

"You're telling me this now? I thought you thought I always look ridiculous."

"You look like Snake Plisskin from 'Escape from New York.'" Matt sees Mello's foot heading toward his shin and slides out of the way of the oncoming kick. "Wow, some things you never grow out of." He opens his laptop and sets it on a low table in the garage. "You know how to set this stuff up?"

"Of course I do, I did my fucking homework," Mello says. "I didn't ask you teach me. What have we got?"

Matt pulls up the schematic. Mello leans over his shoulder to take a closer look. "Perfect," he says.

His breath on Matt's neck makes Matt shiver, even in the heat. 

"You got the camera feeds?" Mello asks.

Matt mashes a button and the two of them disappear from the corner of his computer screen. 

"Excellent." 

Matt feels a little jolt of excitement at the prospect of making Mello happy.

Mello opens the door to a dark lounge-type room.

"You've got to be joking," Matt says.

"What?"

"The fucking sofas again." Three of the red monstrosities stand around a mirror-topped coffee table, facing a wall of monitors. 

"Set up the first bricks," Mello says. "I'll get the ladder."

For a bossy asshole, you're a decent cooperator when you want to be, Matt thinks as he watches Mello work. They install the explosive bricks behind the ceiling tiles near the load-bearing pillars and walls. Matt wouldn't necessarily call it fun, but it feels productive. And connecting the wires to the grid requires enough concentration to keep Matt from slipping into too many memories. Like building sandcastles with Mello that Mello would kick over in a fit of rage. Or building computer networks that Mello would test his own viruses on. 

Even with the air conditioning on, they end up covered in sweat and plaster dust. Matt dreams of a shower. 

"Is that everything?" Mello looks at the laptop screen. His damp bandana hangs around his neck. A grid of red lights shows the locations of all of the charges. 

Matt shuts the computer and closes the latches on the toolbox.

Mello freezes. "What the fuck."

The voices are distant at first. Then Matt hears a door opening at the end of the long hall attached to the lounge.

"What the--shit, come on--" Mello grabs the collar of Matt's shirt and pulls open the door to the supply closet in the corner of the room. Matt nearly drops the computer and the toolbox. He wedges himself inside and sets them carefully on the floor in the pitch darkness. 

Mello closes the door. The closet is shallow and the two of them stand pressed against each other and a shelf of cleaning supplies and boxes of ammunition. 

"Mel, what the fuck is going on?"

"Shhhh," Mello says. 

Matt can feel Mello's pulse racing. 

The voices get louder. It sounds like six people to Matt, three women and three men, drunk and laughing. 

Mello takes a deep breath and whispers delicately in Matt's ear. "They're not supposed to be here."

"I figured out that much," Matt says. His cheek brushes Mello's.

"Fuck. It's Snydar and his little cronies. Oh, shit. They brought prostitutes."

"Isn't that a little rich coming from you?"

Mello grabs Matt's jaw. "I don't make people listen in who don't want to hear it." He lets Matt go. 

"Fair enough." 

Mello sighs. "Fuck. I knew it. I knew Snydar was moving shit around behind Rod's back, but now I can't expose him without showing I was here." 

"Wait a second," Matt says. "None of them noticed the lights were already on?"

"Most of them are already high. Maybe they thought they hit the switch on the other side of the hall. They came in through the front, I didn't hear the garage doors open."

Matt discerns one of the men laying out lines of cocaine on the coffee table. "Jesus, how long are they going to be here?"

"No fucking idea." Mello rests his forehead on Matt's shoulder. "God, I'm so fucking tired. I just want to go home."

Matt blinks in shock for a moment. It's the closest thing he's ever heard to Mello admitting defeat. The weight of Mello's head on his shoulder is heavy but oddly comforting, in spite of the surge of panic. 

Matt reaches up slowly, tentatively, and runs his fingers through Mello's hair.

+

"Body heat," Aiko said, "Is one of the most provocative forces there is."

Mello stood blindfolded, tied to a metal pole in the corner of Aiko's living room. She breathed on his neck. 

"Some people just want to be touched," she said. "They're lonely." She drew her finger up Mello's chin and he inhaled as deeply as the ropes would allow. "That's not the kind of client you want," she whispered in his ear. "They just need a companion. They don't need an expert like you and me. A stuntman."

She stood close to him, not quite touching him. The air on his skin was cool where she wasn't, and electrified where she was. Her hand found the base of his neck. He felt the heat of her breath as she whispered. 

"You and I are here for the people who need more," she said. "Its not enough just to get them off. They need total oblivion."

Oblivion.

Mello's headspace was hazy. Cogent enough to leave the scene if he needed to, but not enough to argue. Later, lying with his head in her lap while she watched TV, he brought it up again. 

"You're wrong," he said. "Everyone wants oblivion. It's just different things that get them there."

"Hm," she swirled her sake around in its glass. "Perhaps. That's one way of putting it." She took a sip and drizzled her nails down the front of Mello's shirt. "Then you and I are here for the people who need more than this."

Mello shut his eyes. I don't know, he thought. Sometimes this is enough. Not to get off, but to simply disappear. Ropes can suspend me in the air, but sometimes just being touched is enough to suspend me in time. 

Mello never quite knew what to call their relationship. He remembered bitterly that he'd never really had a mother or a sister. Teacher and student seemed closer, though on some days, it seemed closer to teacher and pet. 

Matt's hand rests delicately, nervously on the back of Mello's neck. But Mello likes the feeling of it, both the touch, and Matt's nervousness. Matt winds his fingers through Mello's hair again. A bold move for someone who's still shaking slightly.

To be a provider of delicious fear, Mello thought, you have to be dangerous and safe at the same time. If you weren't truly dangerous, no one would find you alluring enough to hire you. If you weren't safe, no one would ever come back to you. In Mello's mind, distance equaled safety. Never stay over too late after a scene, never get too close, don't divulge too much personal information. Put on the show for the ones who need the show. Aiko had invoked the distance of gender: Mello knew from an early age he had no sexual interest in women, and that, in this case, was enough. Aiko herself claimed to have no preference. Mello assumed her preference was to be alone. 

Mello lets Matt continue to touch his hair. Whether it's more calming to Matt or himself, Mello can't say. The prospect of getting caught by Snydar is not delicious fear. 

I can't just shoot them. For one thing, Mello thinks, my gun is still in the truck, and then there's the issue of getting rid of the bodies. And covering up the deaths...pulling it past Rod...

Snydar probably has his gun on him. If we get caught...if something happens to Matt...

Shit. 

The chemical pine smell in the closet is intense, but it's better than whatever the lounge is about to smell like, and better than his and Matt's sweaty clothes. Screechy laughter rips through the air.

"I hate these stupid hookers Snydar hires," Mello whispers into Matt's shoulder. "Imagine being so desperate for money you'd come all the way out here."

Matt tries not to laugh. "Yeah. Good thing I'm not in this for the money."

In this small of a space, there's little avoiding touching each other. They have to move carefully in the dark, to avoid knocking anything over and making noise. 

"Mel...they're not going to be here, like, for days, are they?" 

"No," Mello says. "Snydar's got meetings he's supposed to be in tomorrow. They'd better not fucking stay out here. I'm not about to die of dehydration in a fucking utility closet." 

"What do we do now?" 

Mello lifts his head, his face inches from Matt's. "Wait," he whispers. "Try to take our minds off of it."

"And how are we going to do that? Are you going to tell me a story?"

"Psh. I'd have to think of something up." Mello can still sense Matt's elevated heart rate. The heat from his body ought to be suffocating. But Mello finds it intoxicating. 

He presses his body into Matt's, against the wall.

"Mel, what are you doing," Matt says.

"I'll stop if you don't like it," Mello says. 

Matt doesn't say anything. He just takes a deep breath. 

"Matt...you have to tell me, if there's something you don't want to do. I'm not a mind reader." Mello grips Matt's waist.

"Yeah," Matt says. "I'll tell you." 

"If one of those pieces of shit out there makes a mess, they're going to open this closet. If they see us, doesn't it make more sense if we're out here doing the same thing they are?"

Matt tilts his head back. Mello touches his lips to Matt's exposed neck.

"Mel...is this the only reason you're touching me?" 

"No." Mello wraps his arms around Matt's torso. "Do you want to know...why I didn't talk to you for four years?" 

Matt drapes his arms around Mello's shoulders. "Yeah. Yeah, I would love to know, honestly, why you just dropped off the face of the earth and treated me like I didn't exist."

Mello grips Matt a little tighter. "I couldn't stand to be distracted," he says. "Would have driven me fucking insane having you out here." He slips his hand up the back of Matt's shirt, his skin still damp with sweat. 

"What the fuck is your problem," Matt whispers.

"You want to go alphabetically or chronologically?"

Matt stifles a laugh. 

Mello will never apologize. It had to be this way. Matt will get over it. Won't he?

"Distract me," Mello says.

"What?"

"Please." Mello grins in the dark. "You came out here to help me, didn't you?"

Matt groans softly. 

"So come on." 

Matt lifts his head, and Mello touches his lips to Matt's. He reaches for the back of Matt's neck and breaks the seal of Matt's lips with his tongue.

Matt is a tentative, awkward kisser, and thank god, Mello thinks. He himself hasn't kissed anyone in years. The last time he kissed someone, he was sitting on a man's lap in a train station, carefully removing the man's wallet from his back pocket while he was distracted.

Distracted.

But Matt, as it turns out, is only hesitant at first. He pulls Mello closer and becomes more deft and even with his tongue. Mello feels his grip weaken.

Matt draws back after a moment. His throat is tight, as if trying to avoid crying. "You owe me four fucking years of my life back, you know that?" He grips a handful of Mello's hair at the base of his skull. "So make it up to me." Matt kisses Mello again.

Mello feels his body begin to melt. 

So this is what she meant, Mello thinks, when she warned me. Not to get too close.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly smut and arguments.

"L didn't choose you because your emotions always get the best of you," Near said.

Mello turned around at the end of the long hall. "Yeah, well you know what? L didn't choose you either, because you're a smug, obnoxious little asshole."

"I think you just proved my point," Near said.

Mello froze, his body rigid with anger. He decided to speak calmly. "You better hope you never see me again." He used every ounce of self-restraint not to slam the door to his and Matt's room behind him. 

Mello looked around the room. Matt wasn't there. It was for the best, he thought. He took out a suitcase and began to pack. 

You're wrong, Near. I won't let my emotions get the best of me. I'll use them as fucking rocket fuel. If I hate you, it'll just make me that much better at everything I do. It will make me the best. 

Mello thought of anger like a chemical bath that removes impurities from metal. Let it refine you, he told himself; let it make you sharp.

He pulled the figurine of Mary Magdalene out of the drawer and laid it in the suitcase. He stood hunched over it and his body began to shake. A few teardrops fell on the stack of black t-shirts.

L...Ryuzaki...I thought you were coming back. You were supposed to come back. You were supposed to teach me and Matt everything. 

Mello fought himself not to make any sound. He made himself keep packing. 

Mom's gone, and Madga's gone, and now L... Mello opened a drawer and noticed a pile of Matt's striped shirts.

No. Don't think about it. Keep packing. Don't let it get the best of you.

+

I am going to get what I want, and no one is going to stop me. Not even Matt. I'm going to get rid of Kira, and I'm going to do what I want with Matt. 

I'm going to get everything I want.

Matt's breathing is tight and agitated. Is he crying? Is he trying not to?

"You know I had to do things this way," Mello whispers. He gives Matt's waist a squeeze. 

"You say that."

"Matt. If I could have brought you with me, I would have. You know that, don't you? Come on, you have to know that!"

Matt shakes his head. "All you think about is yourself. I know that much. I knew it when I came out here, and here I am. You didn't think twice before you left--"

"That is not true," Mello says in a low growl. "I care about you and three other people."

"Wow. Lucky me."

"Matt, come on. Are you going to let me make it up to you or not?" Mello can't say he's sorry. He can't say he needs Matt. Either Matt knows or he doesn't. 

Matt sighs and Mello kisses his neck. Mello can taste the faint salt of sweat on Matt's skin. Matt's breath is shallow and sharp.

"Can you be quiet?" 

"What? Yes," Matt whines more than says. 

Mello takes Matt's face in his hands. What a truly strange sensation, to kiss someone. To kiss someone you don't secretly want to kill. To kiss someone and want to keep kissing them...

Kissing Matt feels like slipping underwater. Mello has to stay above the surface. There's a sensation of falling, delirium. The brink of oblivion...

No. Come back. Don't let it get the best of you.

Whiny moans come from the lounge. Mello never liked the thought of group sex. He's not a team player. The prospect of being discovered and then being made to join in on the group scene is almost as bad as the thought of being shot.

He presses Matt's body into the wall and licks him beneath his ear. Matt lets out a little groan.

"Shhh," Mello says. It's no fun, he thinks, if I can't torment you a little bit. He begins to lift up Matt's shirt. "Let me take this off."

"You have to do it too," Matt says. 

Mello senses him smile in the dark and licks his face again. "Yeah. Twist my arm, it's a fucking furnace in here."

"You're just now noticing that? I always noticed heat doesn't seem to bother you," Matt says. 

Matt lifts his arms and Mello peels his damp shirt off of him and drops it on the floor. He kisses the center of Matt's chest.

"I fucking hate this," Mello says.

"What?" 

"It's dark. I can't see you."

"Yeah, well," Matt breathes into Mello's ear. "You're a writer, use your imagination." 

Mello scoffs. Now who is tormenting whom?

Matt tugs on the edge of Mello's shirt. "Get rid of this." 

It's been a long time since anyone told me what to do, Mello thinks. 

Mello moves his arms carefully to make sure he doesn't knock anything off the shelf. Matt pulls Mello's shirt off, and Mello stands still for a moment at the realization that no other person has ever taken his clothes off before. In all of his encounters with clients, he had done it himself, either quickly, to get things over with, or slowly and theatrically. But he had never let anyone else do it. 

He squints, his throat feels tight. The stale air barely moves against his skin. 

Matt steps closer. "You ok?"

With anyone else, Mello would feel disgusted by the feeling of each other's sweaty skin. Mello always oriented himself to touch as little of his client's bodies as possible, and still took long showers afterwards. There was still the initial thrill of being wanted. But during the sessions themselves, before his tutelage under Aiko, he let himself retreat into his head, into all the unfinished books he would never write.

Mello kisses Matt again without saying anything. Matt's body feels feverishly warm. Mello drapes himself onto Matt as if to steal the excess heat. His hands find Matt's belt buckle. "In spite of the shit we're in," he growls, "I'm more than ok." He undoes the buckle and slips his hand into Matt's jeans. Matt's erection strains against the fabric. 

Matt lets out a little gasp at Mello's touch. 

"Shh," Mello says. "Although...if they opened that door right now...and pointed a gun to my head...I'd still be happy."

Mello can't tell if Matt shudders from his words, the pressure of Mello's hand around his cock, or both. Mello swirls his thumb around Matt's tip, already slick. Well, if we're not dehydrated now, we will be soon, Mello thinks. It's strange, and pleasant, to feel Matt getting harder in his hand, after so many years of wondering what Matt's cock looked like. Mello supposes he has yet to see it.

Stay focused, he tells himself. 

Mello kneels down carefully. He senses Matt's body contract just from the feeling of Mello's breath on his wet skin. Mello grins. This is going to be fun. He pulls Matt's jeans down. 

It was never fun before. Before, it was a psychological experiment where Mello tried to see how much he could distance his awareness from his own body, or just how much power he could exert over a stranger by making him want something. It was occasionally interesting. But it wasn't fun.

Matt rests one hand on Mello's shoulder. The other plays with Mello's hair. 

Mello gives him a long, slow stroke with his tongue, from the base of his shaft to his tip. Matt shudders and sinks back into the wall. Mello holds his hips. 

If this doesn't distract you too, nothing will. 

He keeps slowly licking Matt. He wants to hear the sounds Matt tries to keep himself from making, the gasps and moans. It makes him resent the others outside even more, if such a thing were possible. 

He takes Matt into his mouth and Matt's grip on his shoulder tightens. You're not used to this, are you, Matty? I've never even asked you if you've gotten laid before. Do you prefer men, or do you take what you can get when you're trapped in a fucking supply closet?

Matt's attempt at self-restraint is so endearing. I know. You have to work so hard to be good. 

Mello swirls his tongue around Matt's shaft and takes him deeper into his throat. Matt's just on the thicker side of average, which surprises Mello, given how lanky he is. 

Mello feels Matt wince and struggle not to groan. Mello sucks him harder. 

Maybe this was a bad idea, making you keep quiet so we don't get shot. God, I want to hear you...

Mello draws back; he licks and kisses Matt's exposed abdomen, then stands up slowly. "If you want me to stop," he breathes into Matt's ear, "just squeeze my shoulder two times, all right?"

"Ok," Matt creaks. "But please don't stop, it feels...really good..."

Mello grabs Matt's cock and gives him a slow, sloppy kiss before he crouches back down again. 

All right, now it's on you not to cough and choke and give yourselves away. 

But more squealing and groaning comes from the lounge, and Mello feels a wave of anger. 

Be sloshed enough not to hear us, but cogent enough to get the fuck out of here. 

Mello takes his time with Matt, bringing him right to the edge, then gently backing off. It's fun to torture him a little, but this is in the interest of time. 

Matt reaches for one of Mello's hands on his waist and intertwines his fingers with Mello's. Mello gives his hand a squeeze. 

I know. You're close. 

Matt's hips begin to jerk and Mello swallows him down greedily. Matt shudders against the wall, then relaxes, panting, still gripping Mello's hand. 

Mello gets up again and wraps his free arm around Matt's back, slick with sweat. His throat and jaw burn, but he doesn't care. 

Matt shivers. Mello kisses him again and begins to press his body into the wall again, gently at first, then more forcefully. He feels Matt's grip on his hand weaken. 

If I go to hell, I hope there will at least be dark closets to fuck you in.

For a few moments, Mello just stands and clutches Matt. Tiny rivers of sweat flow between them, the heat like a sauna. Matt's breathing is heavy and erratic. 

Then Matt brushes a damp lock of hair out of Mello's face and kisses his temple. "Ok," he whispers. "Your turn."

"Get on the floor with me," Mello says. He reaches out for the wall behind him and sits back against it. Matt crouches carefully, on his hands and knees.

Fuck. I wish I could see you, Mello thinks. 

Mello notices Matt's hands shake as he unbuckles Mello's pants. He fights with the zipper. He finally frees Mello's cock, by now painfully hard, and begins to lick him. The feeling of it is electric. Mello guides the back of Matt's head with his hand. 

Then Mello notices Matt's mouth is unusually dry. His breathing is labored, and he continues to shake. Mello slips his finger beneath Matt's chin and lifts his head up. "Are you ok?"

Matt pants for a moment. "I think...I feel like...I'm going pass out..."

Oh Jesus. Don't have a heat stroke. Shit...

"Then just lie down. I got it, I'll finish myself off." 

Matt reluctantly lays his head on Mello's thigh. Mello unties the soaked bandana from around his neck. He pumps himself, still wet with Matt's saliva, and thinks of Matt's mouth again. How eager he was to please. He lays his other hand on Matt's upper back. 

That was all Mello really wanted: the other person's eagerness. To drive them crazy. Mello realized he cared very little whether he was topping or bottoming as long as the other person was overwhelmed with desire. Powerless. Their madness, my oblivion, Mello thought.

Well, you came out here to help me, didn't you? No one said this couldn't be part of our agreement.

For someone well-versed in vile fetishes, there's still one taboo left in Mello's mind; Pandora's box sits on a high shelf in a dark closet.

So much of this stuff I do for clients...all this extreme, heavy stuff...I needed it so I wouldn't think about you. 

Mello dials his own red telephone of longing. There's no going back, now. The distraction is here, you have to deal with him from here on out. 

Mello pictures Matt kneeling at the edge of the iron bed, doing the work his hand does for him now, looking up at him with eager eyes. 

No, he should be on his hands and knees like he was just now, so I can see more of his body...

You'd look so pretty on the end of my leash. That's right...a little jerk of the chain to make you behave. 

The image sends Mello over the edge. He grits his teeth to keep from making noise and catches himself in the bandana.

For a few moments he and Matt lie silently, panting. The momentary wave of relief washes over him. 

"Mello, I'm--"

"Just relax," Mello says. "Just try to rest, all right?" Don't say you're sorry. Don't you dare say you're sorry, as if you did anything wrong...

"I don't know...what's wrong with me," Matt whispers.

"Come here, sit with me," Mello says. Fuck. Come on, Matt. Just hang in there...

Matt pushes himself back up. "I'm so fucking thirsty." He leans back into Mello's arms. His body feels unnervingly hot. "Fuck, how do you handle the heat out here. I don't remember it ever bothering you when we were kids, either."

"Guess I just have a tolerance for it," Mello says. He shuts his eyes and rests his temple to Matt's. Matt's hair is completely wet. 

It was true, it hadn't bothered him nearly as much as he imagined it would. He thinks of the skeptical woman walking her dog who approached him as he waited on the street corner wearing the librarian's suit. Any normal person would have melted, wouldn't they? But it seemed perfectly normal, just to stand outside and smoke a cigarette. 

Mello wraps his arms around Matt. There's no immediate hope of cooling off, so Mello just pretends he can take away the heat from Matt's body. "You ok?"

"Uh...yeah," Matt forces a little nod.

Hurry up, you bastards, Mello thinks. Get off and get out of here. Take your dumb whores with you. If something bad happens to Matt because of you, I swear I'll fucking kill every last one of you. If not now, as soon as I fucking can. 

"I don't want to black out." The fear in Matt's voice is genuine. 

"I swear to god, if these guys don't fucking leave soon, I will cut off their tiny dicks and shove them down their throats." 

Matt starts to say something, then just sighs. 

Come on, just stay with me...

Mello tries to think of other plans. They can't set off one of the packs of C4 from the laptop; eveything is wired to blow at once. Mello can't call Sandra, she won't get there in time...his phone and gun are in the truck...maybe the others are so distracted, he could sneak out...text Snydar and make it look like it's from Rod...

Fuck.

You were right, Matt. If don't think of anyone but myself, it's because it's too fucking painful. 

Fear wraps itself around Mello like a tentacle.

Don't black out. Please don't black out. If you do, I don't know what to do. 

Matt manages a weak laugh. "Tell me a story, it'll help me stay awake."

That's beyond either of our control, Mello thinks...but both of us need the distraction... 

"Tell me about...L, when he was out here...with B..."

"You know that one," Mello says.

"Yeah. But...I want to hear you tell it."

"All right, fine." Mello kisses Matt's neck and cheek. He runs his thumb lightly along Matt's jawline. 

Where to begin?

L had said it was generally bad to tell children about a murder, but these were no ordinary children, and these were no ordinary murders. So one dark winter evening, in the quiet, empty days after Christmas, L sat down and told them about B.

"You should be prepared, you know," he said. "Some people, when they discover you're intelligent, will try to construe you as crazy, because they're afraid of what they don't understand. But then there are people who are truly both, who are both intelligent and genuinely mad, and B was the finest example of such a person I ever met."

Mello tries to give as much detail as possible, tell the longest version he can. "On an afternoon as hot and gross as this one was, L stood outside the Dauphine bakery and watched Naomi Misora eat a single macaron," he says. "He knew it had to be her. He walked inside, totally unnoticed, bought himself a box of 24, and went back to his suite at the Intercontinental hotel to make a phone call..."

It feels strange to whisper. Mello only remembered being whispered to as a child when Magda wanted him to fall asleep. What wishful thinking, to hope a story can keep Matt awake, keep him from getting sick, keep the two of them together...

Mello reaches for more details. 

"The numerals carved into the victim's body were strangely delicate," Mello says. "L knew anyone who could stand the sight of blood could hash marks into another person's skin. But it made L think of a moment when he and B were children. It was B's birthday, and B slowly drew a series of roman numerals into the cake frosting with his finger. When L asked him about it later, B's eyes were hazy and glazed over. He said, 'sometimes I see numbers, floating. I don't understand what they mean. I write them down, but there's no pattern. I never understand what they mean.'"

The weight of Matt's body is so pleasant, but this is not how Mello wants to feel it. You ought to be panting out of ecstasy, not sickness.

This heat...why doesn't it get to me? It's unpleasant, but I know I can handle it. But for Matt...this is torture. And that...that's what I can't stand...

"I don't want to stay here," a woman's voice whines. "I want to go back to your place."

"I want to go to In-and-Out," another woman says.

"You get the dumbest ideas when you're high," says a man Mello doesn't recognize.

"Nuh-uh, Mia's a genius," hisses the first woman. 

"Dude," another man says, "Let's just go. I'm fuckin' starvin', man."

Snydar complains about having to drive. But eventually the voices recede down the hall until a door slams behind them. The lights in the lounge shut off. For a moment, everything is silent.

"Matt?"

"Hm?"

"Can you get up?"

"I think so." Matt's body quivers as he stands. He opens the door into the dark room.

Mello follows him out and switches the lights back on. 

Matt collapses onto one of the couches and plants his head in hands. His skin is bright pink and shining with sweat. 

Mello brings Matt a ceramic coffee mug full of water that says "World's Best Boss." Someone had bought it for Rod as a joke. Matt's hands tremble as he takes it from Mello. He barely looks up. 

Mello runs back to the dingy, rarely used kitchen and brings over as many styrofoam cups of water as he can carry. He sets them on the mirrored table, still smudged with fingerprints and the faintest trace of white dust. 

When the cups are empty, Mello goes to refill them. He takes the cum-soaked bandana from his pocket and throws it in the trash with the wads of tissues and condoms from the others.

He and Matt sit in silence on the couch.

"Fuck," Mello says.

Matt turns to him.

"We're alive because some woman I hate wanted a fucking hamburger."

Matt manages a weak, breathy laugh.

"Dumb whore number one saves the day," Mello says. "Unbelievable."

"Put it in one of your books," Matt says. 

Mello rolls his eyes. 

"Besides," Matt says. "You heard the other one. Mia is actually a genius."

Mello shakes his head. "Are you all right?"

"I feel like dog shit," Matt says. He slicks his hair back with his hand and Mello finds it strange looking. He's used to Matt's eyes barely peeking out from behind their red curtain. 

"Don't try to drive back, then."

"I won't. I'm..."

Don't say it. Don't say you're sorry when you didn't do anything wrong. "You look like Ziggy Stardust with your hair like that."

"If either of us is David Bowie, it's you," Matt says. Matt slouches forward again. "Is there a shower here?"

"Yeah," Mello says. "Ah, fuck. I don't want to have to put these sweaty clothes back on."

"Is there a washer and dryer?"

"No, but there's a sink and an oven," Mello says.

"Shit. Is that actually going to work?"

"It might." Mello shrugs. 

"Don't burn our clothes up and make us drive home naked," Matt says.

Mello laughs. 

"Have you ever even used an oven?" 

"Shut up," Mello says. "Go take a shower, it's over there." He points to a door in the corner of the room.

Matt gets up and walks slowly, still regaining his composure. He steps inside, then pokes his head out after a minute. "There's no towels."

"Then you'll have to air dry," Mello says.

"All right, fine. I'm going to rinse my clothes out in the shower, will you bring me my shirt?"

Mello retrieves the soaked t-shirts from the floor of the closet and hands Matt his. He stands in the doorframe for a moment and looks Matt up and down, standing naked by the shower. 

"What?" Matt says.

"Nothing. Don't use up all the hot water."

+

If I didn't black out from the heat, I could have from that stare. 

Matt feels like he's just been eaten alive. He turns the water to cool and takes long, deep breaths. 

Never in his life has anyone looked at him the way Mello did, with fascination and hunger. Matt leans back against the tile, stupefied. He wonders whether Mello looks at anyone else that way. Is that part of the paid act? 

Matt snaps out of it and rinses his clothes out. 

Mello knocks on the door. 

"Uh...come in?" 

"I'm gonna use the sink." Mello drops his clothes in the basin and opens the tap. 

Through the glass shower door Matt sees Mello's naked body. Wiry, but less frail-looking than Matt expected. 

Matt shuts off the shower. "Everything about you is very LA except for how fucking pale you are."

"Yeah, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I'm actually a vampire." Mello wrings out his shirt. "And clearly one has already beaten me to you, cause you look like a fucking sheet of paper."

Matt twists as much water as he can out of his dark jeans. "Well shit, Mel. I didn't realize you wanted to suck me dry."

Mello laughs. The tint of malice is there, but still. Another little win, another little bubble of pride wells up within Matt. 

"Yeah. I was saving you for later," Mello says. "All right, let me rinse off, go turn the oven on." Mello hands his wet clothes to Matt.

Matt shakes his head and walks into the kitchen. Saving me for later? You meant to bring me out here all along? Or are you just stringing me along?

Matt sighs. Does it matter, as long as we both want to be out here? 

He lays the clothes on the untouched metal grille and shuts the door. Shit. All the measurements are in Fahrenheit...maybe the lowest setting will work...

Matt retrieves his cigarettes and lighter from the living room. He leans against the counter and lights one. Matt had felt betrayed when Mello left. But to follow him out here feels like another betrayal, to himself. 

Mel, you never had a plan, did you? Why can't you just admit it? Or if you did have a plan, you planned it like one of your stories: a beginning and an end, but all the details in between have to work themselves out as you go. So, what about me? Am I in the last chapter? Do I get a desk and a painting in your apartment, or what?

Matt watches Mello walk into the kitchen. He looks like an animal, completely undisturbed to be naked, his gait fluid and smooth. 

"What?" Mello looks at him.

"I like the way your hair looks when it's wet." 

From the smile that creeps onto Mello's face, Matt can tell no one's ever told Mello this before. 

"You seem back to normal," Mello says.

"Don't let me fool you." Matt leans back against the countertop. "Fuck. First the jet lag, then this."

"Are you going to give yourself a break, or not?"

Matt looks at the floor. "So what do we do now?"

Mello shrugs. "Wait."

"Well if I am good at anything, I am good at waiting," Matt says.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Matt looks at Mello but says nothing. Mello grabs a cigarette and lights it. Smoky haze fills the room. 

They stand next to each other, naked, smoking in the kitchen. There's a casualness to it that Matt finds surreal. But it's all surreal. Nothing's really felt real since L died, anyways.

The one person Matt would have wanted to go to for advice. Especially about someone like Mello. L never seemed interested in anyone, no one came out of the woodwork proclaiming any affairs after his death. But L was good at reading people, predicting people. That would have been worth something. 

But it's not just that. Matt wanted to know everything. There were so many stories L never told them. There should have been new ones. 

Mello flicks his cigarette ash into the sink and runs his thumb down the back of Matt's neck. 

"What are you doing?" Matt asks.

Mello shrugs. He lightly grips a handful of Matt's hair, turns Matt's face to him, and kisses him again, in a nonchalant, unhurried way. 

Mello's kiss is exploratory and slow. Matt feels himself being studied moreso than devoured. 

Christ, Mel. When you kiss me I'm like a starving man trying not to embarrass himself at a feast. It's so hard to hold back...I don't want you to think less of me...

Mello crushes his cigarette butt into the sink and grabs Matt's waist with his free hand. 

Matt finds himself thinking of the handful of people he's kissed. 

Linda, on Christmas, three years ago. Too close. That was what confirmed for Matt, that Linda was, in fact, like a sister, and what confirmed for Linda that she was, in fact, only interested in other women. 

Brigitte, in Zurich. Matt was drunk, and Brigitte was clearly bored and wanted attention. But it had been fun, for a little while at least, to be someone else's entertainment.

Leila, in Belfast. Leila neglected to mention she was married. 

Markus, in London. Markus didn't really want Matt. Markus wanted to make his ex jealous. Matt supposed it worked. Markus never texted back. 

None of them kissed him the way Mello kisses him now. 

Mello grips Matt harder. His movement becomes more urgent. He wraps his arms around Matt's torso and clutches him closer. 

It's like trying chocolate for the first time after a lifetime of eating sawdust, Matt thinks. 

He runs his hand through Mello's hair again and feels Mello's body relax from the pressure on his scalp. 

Oh, Mel. I'm sorry. But I don't really care if we catch Kira or not. I'd go to the ends of the earth to help you. But all I really care about is keeping Kira from catching you. I'm sure eventually you'll figure out my secret. But you'll forgive me, won't you?

Mello takes Matt's face in his hands.

But I know you have secrets of your own. Maybe you were starving, too. 

+

"I can't believe that worked," Matt says. He pulls the stiff fabric of his shirt apart and puts it back on.

"Of course it did, I thought of it."

Matt rolls his eyes. "Yes, another genius plan from the successor to L."

Mello grins. "Nothing short if it."

When they reach the garage, Mello's phone flashes with six missed calls from Sandra.

Where the hell are you? Reads her text. 

Problems at the site, Mello taps back. Fixed now. Coming back. 

You couldn't call me? reads the response.

No. Will explain later.

Mello opens the garage door. The gray pre-dawn light filters in.

"By the way," Matt says as he climbs back into the truck, "I want you to tell me the rest of the story. To keep yourself awake this time."

Mello jams the key into the ignition. "Fine. Where did I leave off?"

Mello weaves the details in as they come back to him. Matt lies back with a cigarette in one hand and his bare feet dangling out the window. 

At the 24-hour diner, they blend in with the handful of tired patrons and staff. Mello continues the story over stacks of chocolate chip pancakes bigger than their heads and too many cups of shitty coffee. 

"L said the thing that amazed him the most was that someone would go through all of that just to get his attention. In a sick way, it was almost like being courted. Instead of a trail of rose petals, B left a trail of cadavers and clues."

Matt pours a packet of sugar into his coffee. "I don't know. It seems like a lot of people would do anything for attention."

Mello cocks an eyebrow. 

"I just mean in general," Matt says. He stirs the coffee. "I always did wonder, though. Why didn't you change your name again? Why did you leave it up on that website?"

Mello looks at his plate. "So you saw it, then." He draws thin lines in the syrup on his plate with his fork. He smiles faintly. "I left it because I didn't think anyone would come look for me. And if they did, I didn't think any of them would think to look there." Mello lifts the fork and lets the syrup drip off the end. "Are you sure you were looking for me when you saw that website?"

Matt's face flushes. "Yes," he sighs. 

Mello's grin is wicked. "You never booked a session."

Matt rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't. Besides. I didn't want to believe it was you."

"You didn't?"

Matt gazes into his coffee. "Well, I didn't think you wanted to be found. But I guess I was wrong."

Mello's face falls. 

Matt looks up at him. "Or maybe you were making up your mind."

Mello smirks. "Maybe."

The waiter brings their check and Mello reaches for it before Matt can say anything. 

+

Matt lies sleeping like the dead on the mattress next to Mello. Mello sits next to him with his laptop on his knees and headphones in. He sees no point in waking Matt up. From the corner of his eye, he notices the subtle rise and fall of Matt's chest. It's comforting, in the way a cat or a houseplant is comforting. And then also a relief to know that later, someone else can pick up where he left off.

It was strange to sleep in the hostel room alone in the next town over from Wammy's. The room felt profoundly empty, cold even with the heat turned up as high as it would go. It would be the first of many nights alone. In strange hotels, train stations, and more than one unfortunate evening tucked away in an alcove of a church, until Mello could find his next victim and a safe place to plug his computer back in. But the nights alone had been better than the nights with other people. Except for Aiko's couch. That hadn't been terrible. He had taken his share of sake-soaked naps on it. 

An unusual calm sets in, and Mello thinks he could even get used to it. He sips another can of Red Bull and squints at the screen.

Everything was erased pertaining to the Kira case. Or was it? There had to be other information from around that time that Watari hadn't gotten his hands on and archived. 

Mello scans through his hours of security camera footage that hadn't been tagged as part of the case. People not involved with the case talking about it. Security guards and janitors gossiping. He slows the video down and reads the lips of the uniformed figures.

That's ridiculous, he thinks. And yet...

"Jackpot," Mello says.

"What is it?" Matt peels open one eye and rolls over.

+

Matt sits across from Mello, each with a computer open on his lap. 

Matt scowls at the video transcription. "Seriously? A notebook? Some kind of fucked-up occult notebook?"

"You saw what they said."

"That sounds exactly like something a deranged, self-important writer would wish for."

"Are you calling me--"

Matt throws his hands up. "I will neither confirm nor deny it."

"Fuck you," Mello says. He props his feet up on the dilapidated coffee table. "But I mean, come on. It makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't that explain all the gaps?"

Matt sinks back into his eroding armchair. "I think you are completely missing the point of Occam's Razor here."

Mello glares at him.

"Nope," Matt says. "No way. You really think there's something supernatural involved."

"I do after seeing four separate instances of people talking about a notebook."

"I don't think your Japanese is good enough to pick out that that's what they're saying."

"Oh, you think yours is better?" Mello cocks his head.

"Mel, I'm just saying--"

"Matt, come on. This has been going on for years and no one else has come up with any better explanation. Think outside the box here."

Matt shakes his head. "You're asking me to believe in a magic killer notebook."

"I'm asking you to consider the possibility of a paranormal element at work."

"You're grasping for straws."

"I'm onto something," Mello says. "Come on, just go with it for now, see where it leads us. Besides, I have a test. When I get Takimura, I'm going to make the Japanese police cough up that notebook. If they freak out, that means it's real. If they bring it, I'm going to use it to beat Kira at his own game."

"This is ridiculous."

"Yeah. You're right. This entire goddamn thing is ridiculous. Fucking embrace it."

Matt looks at the floor. "You're being irrational," he says after a moment. "I think you just believe it because you want to believe it."

Mello glares at him.

"Yeah," Matt says. "I think you don't want to believe any person alive could ever outsmart L. That's why it has to be something supernatural."

Mello's body contracts with anger. "No," he says. "I think you don't want to believe it because you don't like anything you can't explain." He sets his feet back on the floor and leans over the edge of the couch. "But think about it. No one else has succeeded in explaining it either. No one else has figured it out yet. In fact...I'm inclined to think part of why L was killed was because he couldn't anticipate anything paranormal. But what is paranormal, anyway? It's just something unexplained."

"I don't even want to tell you what you sound like," Matt says.

"What?"

"You sound...desperate. You sound like a maniac."

Mello shuts his laptop. "For fuck's sake, Miles, did you come out here to help me or not?"

"Yeah, I did, Mihael," Matt says. "I came here to help you, not indulge some crackpot bullshit theory."

"You saw the tapes," Mello growls. Neither of them is supposed to know the other's real name. Telling each other had been like taking a blood oath. 

The air conditioning unit sitting in the windowsill begins to rattle and buzz. It shuts off. The constant drone filling the room goes silent.

"What the hell?" Mello walks over to it and begins mashing buttons. 

"What's wrong with it?" 

Mello unplugs it and plugs it back in. No dice. He lifts off the top panel and inspects the insides. He and Matt hover over it. 

"Oh come on, it can't be that complicated," Mello says. But more poking and prodding produces nothing. 

"You want me to look up the manual?" Matt asks.

"Oh my god, this fucking piece of crap." Mello kicks the air conditioning unit. 

"Well shit, Mel. If it wasn't broken, it is now," Matt says. "You didn't even give it a fighting chance."

"I don't have time to fix it. I don't have time to get some idiot repair man in here to fix it who can hear me talking to you about this. I'm going to go get a new one." 

"You want me to come with--"

"No, I need you to go through the rest of that video."

"All right, fine." 

"Besides, I don't want a repeat of last night. I'm not about to make you burn up again."

"I--all right, fine, can't argue with that." Matt slumps back down in his chair.

"Just hang tight, all right? I'm gonna' be right back." Mello grabs his keys and wallet off the desk. He glances over his shoulder as he walks out the door and notices Matt looking at him.

\+ 

But Mello isn't right back, and it makes Matt anxious. He sits with his shirt off again and the windows open, but the air is still and no reprieve comes from the late afternoon heat.

Come on, Jeevas, just focus, Matt tells himself. Mel's fine. He's probably buying fucking macarons and bubble tea, taking his time. 

Matt's GameBoy lies by a lamp on a low side table, taunting him. I could just play one more level. Ok, two. And one more cigarette...

But Matt doesn't want it to look like he's been slacking off. He paces around the room. 

I need something to prove to Mello I'm not just fucking around here. But the videos are so fucking tedious...

Matt searches his memory. What else would Watari have overlooked? What would have been left out of the files? 

Matt scrolls through archives of the Kira forums looking for any references to a notebook. His eyes burn, struggling to read in Japanese. At least the level of writing isn't all that sophisticated; most of the kanji are just names or words he already knows. Matt figures most of the people on the forums weren't terribly intelligent in any language. 

There. A TV broadcast. Kira number 2 wants to compare notebooks. Matt looks again and feels a chill. No, this wasn't just something some idiot made up. That actually aired on TV. Unbelievable...

This is insane. At least it's something to show Mello when he gets back. 

But if it's true...if a notebook can kill people...

Then what else might be true?

Matt shivers in the heat again. 

Do I really have to accept this? 

Matt feels a sudden sense of being watched, like an invisible presence in the room around him.

In the worlds of games he loves the thought of magic, whole new sets of rules and possibilities to move the story forward. 

If life is a game, that's one thing. But Matt doesn't want to think that suddenly the rules have changed. Someone has a cheat code, someone has a hack...the game of reality is not what Matt thought it was, and the realization is nauseating. 

Mello, is this what you wanted? Did you want the rules to change? Kira wants to be a god. Do you want to kill a god? 

Matt's phone buzzes. He flinches and snaps out of his daze. He picks it up.

"Matt. Come downstairs and help me carry this."

+

He and Mello haul the new window unit up the four flights of stairs. It isn't terribly heavy, just cumbersome and awkward. 

Matt notices Mello has a plastic shopping bag from a bookstore looped around his arm. 

Mello lays the books on the coffee table and takes the machine from the box. 

"Are you sure you know how to install that?" Matt asks.

"Come on, it's not fucking rocket science. Of course I can."

"I just mean, don't let it fall out the window and kill someone."

Mello rolls his eyes. "You have no faith in me."

"You know, on this, I really don't," Matt says.

"Come here and hold it steady."

Matt realizes he was right. Without the extra set of hands to keep it in place, he visualizes the car parked directly beneath the window with a massive dent in the roof, angry neighbors, phone calls to the police...of all the ways for them to be caught and discovered...

"There." Mello screws in the last panel to keep the unit fixed in the window. He reaches down to plug it in. "If this doesn't work, I'm going to fucking cut someone."

"Well don't look at me," Matt says.

Mello flicks the switch. The fan begins to whirr. 

"Ok, this thing says to give it half an hour." Matt holds up a set of instructions. 

"All right, fine. Until then, sauna time, your favorite." Mello unzips his vest and throws it over the back of the couch. 

Matt smirks. "Well I'm not going to complain about that part."

Mello cracks a smile.

"What the hell did you get at the bookstore? I wondered what took you so long."

Mello draws a book from the bag and tosses it to Matt. 

A World Anthology of Folktales. An older edition of it had occupied the shelf in his and Mello's room at Wammy's. A gift from L.

"Mel...what is this?"

"Don't you remember it? L gave it to us."

"Yeah, I remember having a copy way back when, but..."

"Turn to the chapter for 'S.' Look for 'shinigami,' the Japanese gods of death." Mello takes out a cigarette and lights it.

"Ok..." Matt flips tentatively though the book. He stops at entry for 'salamander' and laughs.

"What is it?"

"I found you," Matt says. "The Salamander. A creature believed to withstand heat and fire."

Mello rolls his eyes. "Look for the shinigami part."

"All right, all right, fine." Matt turns the page to a wood-block print of a tall, skeletal creature with a feathery ruff. "Hm. Maybe this is you instead. Skinny and feathery."

"Matt, just read the fucking entry!"

Matt laughs. Then his face falls. 

The shinigami were believed to kill their victims by writing their names on sacred scrolls, reads the introduction. According to legend, several of these scrolls made their way into the human world, causing centuries of feuds and warfare. 

One such tale begins on the following page. "You're not serious," Matt says.

"I'm not saying it's a literal scroll," Mello says, his face wreathed in cigarette smoke, "but think about it. You're a serial killer who wants to play god. Why not draw on mythology for inspiration?"

Ok, Matt thinks. A metaphorical notebook. An idea. That sounds...a little more plausible. "Like ten thousand zodiac killers," Matt says.

"Yeah. Kind of like that."

Matt turns the book over in his hands. He had left most of his belongings at Wammy's, and only took a few books with him. Mello had liked this one. It was precisely for that reason that Matt left it in the library. One less thing to torment him. 

Mello sits back down on the couch and opens his computer again. Matt sits down with the book and skims through it. The Chupacabra. The Loch Ness Monster. Quetzalcoatl. His eyes start to tear up.

Mello looks up at him. "What?"

"Nothing," Matt says. The illustrations are bigger in this edition, bled to the edge of the page. Matt remembered some of them; L had read them some of the stories out loud. Matt didn't remember the Japanese gods. Or the Salamanders. But the other illustrations are enough to trigger a flood of memories...

"The mind is capable of creating all kinds of fantastical things in order to explain what it doesn't understand," L said. "Some of them are quite beautiful. But that doesn't make them real. You have to remember that. People are trying to make sense out of the world in whatever way they can. Some are better at it than others. Some are more creative. But remember, most of the things people tell themselves are lies."

Matt sighs and slumps over in his chair. He turns back to the section on shinigami. More grotesque creatures look up at him from the pages. 

That was part of the appeal of games, Matt realizes. A chance to go back and revisit the creatures from the weird and wonderful stories he loved as a kid. 

This book...it's painful to look at it now. 

Matt feels his face getting hot, his eyes sting. Fuck. Not now. 

Mel, don't look at me, don't ask me what's wrong. I don't want you to think less of me. 

Matt closes the book and shoves it across the coffee table. "Why did you buy this?" His voice is thin.

Mello looks up from the screen. "To prove a point."

"You could have just texted me and told me to look it up on the internet." He looks straight at Mello and tries not to break eye contact.

Mello notices the intensity of Matt's stare and cocks his head. "Fine...I guess I just missed it, then. I used to like the stories in it. You know. You remember."

"Yeah," Matt says. "I remember that. But I didn't think you missed anything from Wammy's now."

Matt holds his gaze, and the closest thing Matt's ever seen to a look of concern appears on Mello's face. Matt sighs and lets himself look at the floor. "You're a fucking ghost, you know that? I hate you," he says.

He doesn't see the pain in Mello's eyes when he says this.

"I hated you then, anyway. For leaving. You made me so fucking mad, I wanted to die, Mel."

Mello shuts his computer again.

"L was dead and then you left, and you were as good as dead to everyone at Wammy's. I felt like the last person on Earth." Matt's voice cracks, but no tears spill from his eyes yet, and he feels relieved at keeping some modicum of composure. "I didn't touch that book since, you know." Matt rests his elbows on his knees and grips two handfuls of his hair. "What the fuck am I doing. I should have let you do this on your own. If you wanted to be dead to us, I should have just let you."

Why am I saying this, Matt wonders. Words are just coming out of my mouth without my own permission. 

Matt's gut clenches at the realization that it's a test.

Mello stands up and walks slowly over to Matt. He stands in front of him and lays his hands on Matt's shoulders.

"Matt," Mello says. "I'm going to win."

Matt scoffs and looks up. 

"I am going to do whatever it takes to win. You know this." 

Matt groans softly. Mel, what the fuck are you--

"But it's a team game," Mello says. His eyes are intense. "I found that out the hard way. I can't win if I don't have the best players."

Matt shuts his eyes again. 

"Stay with me," Mello says. "Stay in the game with me because I can't win without you."

The gravity in Mello's voice makes Matt freeze. 

"I told you I would make it up to you," Mello says. "And I told you I would do whatever it takes to win. So when are you going to start believing me?"

"When you fucking do something to prove it," Matt says to the floorboards.

Mello laughs, taken aback. "Oh yeah? And what do you want me to do first?"

Matt grabs Mello's wrists and uses them to pull himself up. He's glad that they're roughly the same height. He takes Mello's waist in his hands and whispers in his ear. "I want you to order a fucking pizza or something because neither of us has eaten a goddamn thing all day."

Mello laughs, and Matt feels that glow again. Another tiny victory.

Mello gives Matt's neck a slow, delicate stroke with his tongue. "I see," he says, his voice breathy with mock seduction. "And what do you want on it?"

"I don't care," Matt says. "Anything but pineapple. Surprise me. And then...I want you to suck me off."

Mello throws his head back laughing. "Deal." He pulls his phone from his back pocket. 

Matt sits on the couch, and then, to his surprise, Mello sits on his lap while he talks on the phone. He leans back into Matt and rests his head on Matt's shoulder. 

"Yeah. Unit 404. It's up the stairs. All right." Mello hangs up without saying thank you. He drops the phone on the coffee table and turns around to face Matt, his smile demonic.

This is all so fucked up, Matt thinks. Mello kisses him and strokes him through his jeans, he undoes Matt's belt easily with one hand. 

You can never say you're sorry. I can never say how much I missed you. 

But I'd rather be here, with everything a mess, than be alone in London.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update! I lost most of my work on this chapter because of an Evernote crash, and it just killed my motivation for a long time, but I was finally able to rewrite most of it. Thanks for reading.

The doorbell rings and Matt feels a spike of adrenaline. Mello stands up from the couch, where he lay with his head in Matt's lap. Mello yawns and stretches, he slips his vest back on but doesn't zip it up. Matt scrambles to zip up his pants.

Mello hands the pizza delivery man a few bills and shuts the door behind him. "Relax, Matt. It's a pizza, not a grenade." He sets it on the coffee table.

Matt rolls his eyes. "If there's pineapple on this, I quit."

"Quit whining and eat." Mello pulls a slice from the box. He switches on the dilapidated TV set.

The news shows a huge rally outside of UC Berkeley. The activist Derek Calson stands at a podium, flanked by students carrying signs. He makes Mello think of a young Martin Luther King.

 _Democracy is Justice, not Kira_ , reads one sign.

_Society's rules, not Kira's._

_All murder is wrong. End the death penalty. Fear is not peace. End Kira's Holocaust. Kira is a dictator._

"Jesus," Matt says. "I've never seen anything like this in Europe."

"Yeah, well, welcome to America," Mello says. "The good part of it anyway."

"Guess you're looking at your future fan club," Matt says.

"Psh. Sure. They can thank me later."

The camera switches to the counter-protestors. _When Will Kira Come for Derek Calson?_ One sign shows the man's face in crosshairs.

_Kira's peace = America's peace._

"Why isn't he dead?" Matt asks.

"He was exonerated," Mello says. "He's never committed a crime. So I suppose he wins on a technicality."

"His days are numbered, aren't they."

"Maybe. I think Kira will try to use him to his advantage. Right now he's more useful alive than dead. If the tide turns, I'm sure some 'accident' will claim him."

"No," Matt says. "He'd make a big stink out of it. Make an example out of Calson. Wouldn't he?"

Calson addresses the students. "How many of your parents told you not to come here today? They didn't want you to be seen. Recognized. Targeted. How many of you had friends tell you not to show up? Now, how many times have you heard that before? 'Don't go outside, it's not safe.' It sounds like a war zone. Is this the world we want to live in? How long are we going to be under the Kira curfew? And I see all you out there, with your pro-Kira posters, and so many of y'all used to go on and on about Free Speech. Well what happens to Free Speech when you can't even say your own name? You see, this is the culture of fear that Kira wants..."

In spite of themselves, Matt and Mello find themselves drawn in, silent but for the sound of chewing.

There's something so familiar and yet unfamiliar about just sitting down next to Matt, watching television. Something excruciatingly normal. Comforting to anyone who just wants to be normal. But Mello wants so much more than that.

"People say 'crime's gone down.' It hasn't gone down. Petty crime's gone down. Murder rates per country have all soared, but you don't want to count it in your statistics when they're all being committed by the same person. Now, if there were any other cause of death for these people, you'd call it an epidemic. You'd call it a humanitarian crisis. You can't call it what it is. This is genocide. This is murder..."

Mello props his feet up onto the table next to the pizza box. "I don't care," he sneers, "how any of these people die. If it weren't Kira it would have been something else that got to them. It's just a matter of time. These random trash, throwaway people. Who gives a shit about what happens to them. But I still think Kira shouldn't exist. I'll get rid of him on principle."

Matt sinks back into the couch with an empty look on his face. "How can you even say that," he says after a moment. "I guess they seem like throwaway people to you. But they mattered to someone. I don't really understand how you can call them that."

Mello scowls. "Matt. It's a bunch of random strangers. Why would you expect me to give a shit?"

"You don't think every last one of those prisoners had at least one person who cared about them?" Matt reaches for a cigarette and his lighter. "You don't think everyone does?"

Mello scoffs. "Do you actually think that's true? I mean, what about you, Matt? Who cares about you? Roger fucking doesn't. Watari didn't. I mean, besides--"

"Besides who? L, Linda, and...you?"

Mello just stares at him.

"Maybe that's it," Matt says. He exhales a thick cloud of smoke. "Maybe that's all I got. Well, then that's all I got, but maybe that's enough for me." He slumps forward and rests his face in his hand. "So. What about you? Do you think like that because you think no one gives a shit about you? So therefore it follows that no one would give a shit about anyone else?"

Mello lies back with his feet on the table. He says nothing. They finish the pizza and watch the rest of the news segment in silence.

+

Mello stands up and cracks his back. "I'm tired. I can't fucking think straight. I'm gonna go shower off and go to sleep. Just do whatever you want until you want to sleep." He walks into the bedroom without looking back.

Matt's insides contract. It's not really like Mello to announce he's tired. Or admit to not being able to do anything. Though it is like him to complain and give orders.

Matt reaches for his GameBoy.

He's got a thick skin, it doesn't matter, Matt thinks.

But Matt wonders whether Mello just went to sleep early to avoid him. He wonders whether he ought to sleep on the couch. He decides to give his brain a break.

He switches the little device on and lights a new cigarette. He finally loses track of time again. He lets his mind shift into the zone where all else but the game is blotted out and he operates on instinct.

After about an hour he realizes he never heard any doors open or shut. The lights are still on in the bathroom. He lays the GameBoy on the couch and walks to the bathroom door, he knocks a few times. "Mel?"

There's no answer.

"Mel, you done in there? I gotta piss." It's a lie.

Still nothing. Dread like dark smoke drifts through Matt's body.

Don't be fucking ridiculous, he tells himself.

"Mel, I'm opening the door."

The shower curtain is drawn shut when Matt walks in. The air is still humid. Matt sees a pale foot sticking out of the bathtub.

"Mel? Are you awake?" His chest tightens.

For a split second, Matt expects the water to be red instead of clear. He pulls the curtain back. Mello lies with his eyes shut, his body submerged in the water. Matt feels himself crack with relief before the rot of embarrassment sets in.

Like anything I say has that much of an effect on him.

"Mel. Mel? Hey, are you awake?" He brushes Mello's face. There's no reaction. Matt sits on the edge of the bathtub and leans closer. "Mello. Mello, wake up. Hey." He gives Mello's shoulder a little shake. Nothing.

"Mello. Mihael Kheel. I swear to god, Mel. Wake up." Matt plants his hand on the center of Mello's chest. "Misha," he says.

Mello's eyes snap open. His body jolts and water sloshes everywhere.

Mello looks at Matt with wide eyes, like an animal in a trap. "Never call me that," he whispers.

"I...I'm sorry..."

Mello sits up and looks around him, breathing heavily. He runs his hand through his wet hair. "I need to get the fuck to sleep," he says.

Matt stands up and gets out of his way. Mello reaches for a towel from the rack, then stops when he sees his reflection in the mirror. He puts his hand on the edge of the sink and hunches over it, gazing intently at himself in the mirror, as though he isn't sure he's real.

"Are you ok?" Matt asks.

Mello turns around slowly. He looks around the room. He takes the towel and walks, still soaking wet, into the bedroom.

+

That apartment complex would have been a tinder box anyway: the only thing worse than Soviet architecture, Mello thought, was post-Soviet architecture. He shoved the newspaper clippings back in the drawer of his night table at Wammy's and locked it. The only listing for a Kheel family in Minsk had been at that apartment, and that apartment turned to ash in 1993.

Mello was never truly convinced it was theirs.

He had images of a blonde woman and fire in his mind. Probably just dreams, he thought. It's probably not her.

When you're a kid you can't tell dreams apart from memories. You can't tell fantasy apart from reality.

Mello reached for Magda's graying braid and screamed. "I want to read it again!"

She caught his wrist in her hand. "Misha, calm down! We'll read it again, but first you have to calm down!"

The stories were all full of orphans. It wasn't such a bad thing not to have parents, Mello thought as a child. After all, plenty of heroes didn't.

He wrapped the rosary around his fingers and watched the charm catch the light.

"The only thing in the house you haven't broken," Magda noticed. She opened the book back up to the story in question. The Zhar-Ptitza. The Fire Bird.

Misha.

No one's called me that in fourteen years.

The name makes him shiver. The last time he remembers being called Misha, he sits reading with Magda, oblivious to the two foreign men waiting in the dilapidated foyer of the house. The first time he can remember it...

Fire.

Mello lies on his side in the dark bedroom. His wet hair sends thin trails of water down his neck.

+

Matt walks into the bedroom. He peels off his clothes, throws them over the back of a tired chair, and lies down next to Mello.

Matt's body is stiff and awkward. It's difficult to relax. Matt senses that Mello is still awake.

"Mel," he says. "What happened?"

Mello says nothing.

Matt rolls over onto his side. "Come on, it's not like you to not have words for things."

Mello turns onto his back and looks up at Matt in the dim light. He sighs and shuts his eyes again. "I don't...some things...fuck. Some things I don't have words for."

Matt lays his hand on Mello's chest. Mello grabs his wrist.

"They never touched us, did they," Mello says.

"What do you mean?"

"At Wammy's. They always left us alone."

"Well...yeah, I guess they were trying to give us some privacy. Be decent, you know."

"Except L," Mello says. "I hit my head once. L carried me back into the house."

Matt remembers the kids clinging to L like lemurs to a tree. A sign of true intelligence, L said, was to be good with children.

The other adults were very reserved and proper. But L would let you sit on him.

"I wish he never left. Every time he came to visit, on the last day, I was always afraid he would never come back," Mello says.

"You were? Why? We always thought he was invincible."

"I don't know. I just didn't want him to go. I didn't want him to--"

"Do what you did to me four years ago?" Matt says.

Mello releases Matt's wrist and turns back over on his side.

"Mel."

Mello just groans. They lie in silence for a moment.

Matt reaches over and wraps his arm around Mello's torso. He draws himself up next to Mello and noses the back of his neck. He grins.

"You didn't even try to dry off, did you."

"Let me live," Mello says. But he doesn't fling Matt's arm off of him or elbow him in the guts.

Matt slips his other arm beneath Mello's neck and pulls him closer.

It really messed you up, didn't it, Matt thinks. When L died. We all took it hard, but you were the only one who ran away.

What am I doing, rewarding this behavior?

Matt clutches Mello anyway. He feels Mello's body begin to relax. His arms register the faint expansion and contraction of Mello's ribs.

I shouldn't be able to feel your bones this easily, Matt thinks. But we'll sort it out later.

Mello reaches for one of Matt's hands and interlaces their fingers.

"You know, for what it's worth, I don't remember you ever once saying to anyone that you wanted a hug," Matt says.

Mello scoffs. "Well it's not like anyone ever asked. And it's not like I wanted to touch most of those people anyway."

Most of them?

"Would you have let me hug you if I tried back then?" Matt asks.

"I don't know," Mello says. "Would you have tried?"

"I don't know." Matt laughs softly into Mello's neck. "Maybe if I knew you wouldn't kick me in the shin for trying."

Mello gives another heavy sigh. "Matt. Let's just go to sleep."

Matt kisses the back of Mello's neck and the tops of his shoulders. He leans over and kisses Mello's cheek. Mello's face is wet, and Matt can't tell if it's only from the bath.

+

Mello rolls over in bed and expects to feel Matt lying next to him. The bed is empty. Mello opens his eyes.

A piece of paper lies on the night table. Mello switches on the lamp and grabs it.

_I couldn't sleep so I borrowed the car. Back in a few hours. -m_

Mello flops back down in bed and feels a dull ache of betrayal. But I want you here, he thinks.

Matt, you shithead. You love to drive that much, don't you? Fine, go clear your head. Just don't get in a wreck. Don't get stopped.

Mello buries his face in his pillow. A familiar knot of worry ties itself in his stomach, one he hasn't felt since Aiko suddently quit answering her phone.

+

Few things are as tempting as a stretch of open highway.

After the nauseating stop-and-go traffic from the previous day, the clear roads are like a dream. Matt's ankle cramps as he tries to keep himself from flooring it, pushing Mello's car to its limit. He can't get stopped.

A pack of motorcyclists has the same idea, tearing into the night. Matt hears the roar of them before he sees them. They pass him, their bright chrome gleaming in his headlights.

Mello, when did you even learn to ride a motorcycle, Matt wonders. You going to teach me some day? You have this whole crazy life out here, but you barely tell me about it. Eventually I'll make you tell me about it, how it all got to be like this.

Matt rolls down the window and lets the wind stream through his hair. He puts his goggles on and imagines coming back out here with Mello. A 4 AM bike ride almost sounds romantic. But too distracting, Matt thinks, looking at Mello riding ahead of him in those ridiculous pants.

Matt wonders if Mello's ever been the cause of an accident. But if he had been, wouldn't he have bragged about it by now?

The pavement ahead makes the perfect cinema screen for Matt's thoughts to project themselves onto. He can stop himself from letting his speed get away from him, but not from letting a thousand imagined futures sprawl out in front of him.

I could stay out here. I could get a '68 Camaro. I bet he'd pose on the hood of it just to taunt me.

Maybe I could work out some kind of arrangement with Kreuz and work out here. This place is full of people who want attention but they're all fanatical about their privacy. I guess Mello fits right in in that way, too.

Maybe UCLA teaches game design.

Maybe I could teach game design.

Matt parks the car and stands at on overlook on the side of the highway. This far south, the night is dark, and a few stars struggle to shine against the light from the distant city. Dark waves roar beneath him. Matt lights a cigarette, the glowing tip like a tiny beacon. Everything is silent except for the water and the constant wind. It feels purifying.

Matt leans against the side of Mello's car and sighs.

I quite like California. I could get used to this.

He takes a long drag and pictures Mello, lying in bed in the dim light before Matt left. How strange to see him looking serene for once.

If Mello gets what he wants, he's going to be insufferable, Matt realizes. He's going to act like a god. But maybe he'll come back down to Earth. I'll go to Japan and New York, maybe even Zurich again. Maybe then we can stay out here.

If Mello doesn't get what he wants, he'll be just as insufferable, though, won't he? If Near wins, Mello will have the same chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life. But maybe he'll get over it.

Maybe.

Either way, you'll never be normal, will you? God, you're a fucking demon of a man, aren't you?

But I knew that when I came out here, Matt tells himself. Coming out here...why do I feel like this is both the best and the worst decision I ever made?

+

A figure with red, glowing eyes sits perched on a ledge. At first glance, Matt thinks it's a gargoyle.

Matt walks slowly through the cathedral. He has an appointment, but he can't remember with whom.

The figure's eyes follow him down the aisle. Matt looks up again. He looks so much like L, Matt thinks.

+

Matt wakes up to the smell of something burning.

He walks into the kitchen in a t-shirt and boxers. Mello stands shirtless at the counter with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, spreading Nutella on a couple of pieces of toast.

Matt pretends not to notice the burned up pieces of toast in the trash can.

"Hey. You want some?" Mello asks.

"Uh...sure." How domestic of you, Matt thinks. He grabs one of only a couple of plates from the cupboard.

"Where'd you go last night?" Mello slides fresh bread into the toaster.

Matt shrugs. "South."

Mello squints.

"What? I came back, didn't I?"

Mello pulls two cans of Red Bull from the refrigerator and throws one to Matt.

Matt cracks it open and waits on his toast. "So what's on the radar today?"

"Sato's got video feeds," Mello says. "So we need monitors. They're supposed to get Takimura tonight."

"So...we're going shopping."

"Well they're not going to materialize out of thin air," Mello says. "Sandra's got some. It's all the cables and shit we still need."

"Yeah, all right, whatever. After bombs, hooking up monitors is nothing." Matt smirks. "Just think of all the porn you could watch with more screens," he muses.

Mello rolls his eyes. "Try to just use one for your games," he says.

Matt holds his hands up. "You say that like you expect me to slack off."

"Well I'm really expecting this to be riveting," Mello says. "Although...there is some more footage I want to look at." He sits like L again without realizing it, crouching. "I want to look for interference on the tape. From paranormal activity."

"Once this Kira stuff is over, you should do one of those ghost hunters TV shows or some shit."

"Hm. I would be good at that," Mello says.

"Somehow I think you'd like being on TV." Matt spreads a thick layer of Nutella onto his toast.

But Mello looks off into the distance, out the window. "When we were at Wammy's...did you ever see those photos of B? Before all the photos had to be shredded? There was this weird light around him. Streaks and orbs on the film. That's the kind of stuff I want to look for on the tapes."

Matt feels a shiver and shakes his head. "No," he says. "I never saw them."

+

Matt has just finished pulling on a clean shirt when he hears the door to the apartment open and flinches.

Shit, Mel, could you at least warn me when people are coming over? That was one thing with the pizza guy, but come on.

Matt recognizes Sandra's voice.

"You're asking way too many favors," she says. Matt notices the smell of her menthol cigarettes.

"Come on, I'm doing you a favor taking all this shit off your hands," Mello says.

Two men Matt doesn't recognize lay large cardboard boxes in the corner of the living room.

"I can't believe this is your place," Sandra says.

"Please. I've seen the shithole you live in.

Sandra cracks a smile. "Yeah, I'm a pack rat. But that's why I got what you need." She looks at the others. "We done here?" She turns back to Mello. "All right, you need anything, be sure not to call me."

Mello laughs and Matt's gut aches with jealousy.

I thought I was the only person who made you laugh.

Matt feels an immediate haze of shame wash over him.

I guess I ought to be glad he gets along with anyone. At least that part of him is still human.

Matt peeks out from the bedroom as the others leave.

Mello gives one of the boxes a kick. "What a load of garbage. But it'll do." He notices Matt and looks up. "You ready? Get your gun, let's go the range after we get the rest of the stuff. By the time we get back there won't be as much traffic."

Matt instantly regrets not offering to drive as soon as they make it onto the highway. The lurching back and forth of traffic makes him afraid he'll see his Nutella toast again.

+

Mello pulls a variety of cables from the wall and shoves them into a basket. Matt gets distracted by a game console display: the new PlayStation 3 taunts him. A special edition of the new Nintendo DS stands on a table next to it. Matt heaves a sigh.

"You're obsessed with this stuff, aren't you," Mello says.

"Yeah. I live for it." Matt picks up the DS box. This one has a holographic blue case, bundled with a Pokemon Blue cartridge.

Mello sneers. "Don't you already have that one?"

Matt's face flushes. "Yeah, but this one's different." Then he cocks an eyebrow. "Don't you have like fifty of the same leather jacket?"

Mello cracks a grin and walks to the register. Matt puts the box down and follows.

"Sure is a lot of cords you got there," the clerk says.

"Amazing," Mello says with a straight face. "You have eyes."

The clerk just blinks at him. "You want a bag?"

"Please," Mello growls.

Matt stifles a laugh. Mello slaps a wad of cash onto the counter and takes the cables. Matt follows him out with a longing glance at the consoles.

Mello throws the bag into the backseat. "Fuck," he says. "I forgot something. Wait for me."

"I'm going to melt," Matt says.

Mello throws the keys at him. "Start the car. I'll be right back."

Mello flings open the door and picks up the blue DS box. He doesn't look at the price tag.

"Hey, can you wrap this? I mean just cover it in paper," he says to the clerk.

The clerk looks at him blankly.

"Or...fuck. Just give me an extra bag." Mello pushes more bills across the counter, covers up the box and slips it in another bag. That's passable.

Mello shoves the bag under the backseat of the car.

"What'd you get?" Matt asks. He sits in the driver's seat.

"Remotes," Mello says. "And a new modem."

"Hey, do you mind if I drive?" Matt asks.

Mello shrugs. "Whatever." He sinks into the passenger seat, puts his feet up, and lights a cigarette. "I swear to god, some people are so stupid it hurts."

"What do you mean?"

"The clerk in that shop. Dumb as a fucking brick." Mello takes a drag. "You ever get sick of being the only intelligent person in the room?"

Matt laughs a little under his breath. "I mean, I was hanging out with Olga's friends, they kind of kept me on my toes." Matt turns back onto the highway. "I think you need stupid people, though. Without them you wouldn't be special."

Mello rolls his eyes. No brilliant retort emerges in his mind, and it makes his abdomen contract.

"Sorry, Mel. Not everyone can bee a genius like I am."

Mello grins. "If you and I are thoroughbreds, everyone else wishes they could be a fucking quarter horse."

Matt shrugs.

"Why can't Kira go after the stupid people," Mello says. He flicks his ashes out the window.

"They tried that in the forties," Matt said. "It's called Eugenics, and it's highly unethical."

"I fucking know that. I'm making a joke."

"Yeah," Matt says, "And I'm making a point." He changes lanes and his expression softens. "Do you think you deserve to be alive?"

Mello is still for a moment. The fact that he doesn't immediately say yes gives him a chill. "What kind of a question is that."

"It's just a question."

"It's never just a question," Mello says. "There's always something behind every question. There's always an agenda. You remember what L said."

"Well, yeah, I'm getting somewhere. But you still never answered my question."

Mello says nothing.

"So...do you think you deserve to live?" Matt says.

"You mean to be alive at all, or to just not die?"

"The first one. To be alive."

"Yeah," Mello says.

"Why?" Matt asks.

Mello scoffs. "Because I can fucking do things. I make things happen. I don't just wander through my life like some idiot sheep who can't make their own decisions. I'm not part of some stupid corporate game--"

"Not just a cog in the machine, eh?"

Mello crosses his arms.

"What if the machine can't run without the cogs?" Matt says.

"Since when are you so fucking philosophical?"

"What? I thought you liked having these kinds of conversations."

Mello just looks out the window. "Take this exit." He points with his foot.

"Do you think the people Kira kills deserve to die?" Matt asks.

"Some of them. Not all of them."

"What about stupid people?"

"Same deal," Mello says. "Some of them. Not all of them." He turns to Matt. "Do you think you deserve to live?"

"I do," Matt says. "But I couldn't tell you why. I don't think I ever did anything special. But I don't feel like giving up. So, yeah. I just do." He changes lanes and passes the car in front of them. "Sometimes I wonder if anyone really deserves anything."

"This is what you think about when you're not glued to that little game...thing?"

Matt grins. "I think about it sometimes. Yeah." He sighs. "Like why did L even do what he did. I don't think he saw it as just a game. I think he wanted to help people. Maybe they didn't deserve it. L just did it anyway, because he could."

Mello feels a sinking in is gut. He never really cared about why L did anything he did. Only how. "L didn't deserve to die," Mello says, nearly whispering.

"Why? Because he helped people?"

"Because he did things no one else could."

"Which ultimately helped people."

"Sure." Mello shuts his eyes. "L never tried to be saint or a hero. That's what was so great about him. He was just the best. He didn't go on some bleeding heart crusade. He didn't tell anyone what to think or what to believe. If there was a job to do he just fucking did it. Left out all the moral high-horse bullshit."

"No Kira's Kingdom for L, huh," Matt says.

"I swear to god, I'm going to fucking crush him." Mello clenches his fists. "I'm not just going to find him. I'm going to annihilate him. I'm going to step on his throat and make him beg for mercy while he looks up the barrel of my gun. But I don't want anyone else to see it. Nobody gets to watch. It's going to be just him and me. When the last thing he sees is my cross, he better hope the gods have more mercy than he does."

They wait at a stoplight. When Matt turns to Mello, his expression is soft. "When you say you swear to god...what god are you swearing to?" Matt asks.

"Whichever one will listen," Mello says with a sneer, "and give me the strength to crush my enemies."

"Like a god of death?"

"If the gods of death are real, I hope I fucking meet one."

"Do you actually think gods are real?" Matt asks.

"I think there are things beyond human perception that are real," Mello says.

"You know, I'm surprised to hear you say that. I always thought you liked that book of L's because you liked the stories, not because you believed in any of it. I never would have pegged you for someone who took any interest in anything supernatural--"

"There's nothing supernatural about it," Mello says. "Something's either real or it isn't. You either perceive it or you don't. Radio waves were always real, they're real whether you have a radio or not."

"I hadn't really thought about it like that," Matt says.

Mello squints and looks out the window. "Any time you think there's something supernatural, it just means it's unexplained. What Kira does is just unexplained. It doesn't mean it can't be understood." Mello's face is dark but his voice is animated. "If you think something goes against the laws of nature, it doesn't. It just means you don't know the law. It's not the end of the story. There's a higher law at play, but you just don't understand it."

Matt feels faintly hollow as he drives.

"L would have figured it out if he survived." There's a quiver to Mello's voice. "He would have known you have to solve a problem on a higher level than the one it exists on. The other investigators are failing because they don't look high enough. They don't know how to imagine. They're too locked in. And all those dumbass conspiracy theorists on those stupid fucking Kira forums...they'll never figure it out because they'll believe anything. They don't know how to think."

"So you think Kira has some kind of...spiritual technology? And you're going to figure out what it is?"

Mello looks at Matt. His eyes have a maniacal glow. "Absolutely."

+

Gods or no gods? Which is better, which is worse?

The image of the cross hanging from the end of Mello's gun flashes in Matt's mind.

If there are no gods, there is no one to judge you.

If there are no gods, there is no one to help you.

Mello talked about a higher set of laws, but which laws?

You don't like to think of life as a game, but you still insist it has rules. Ah, Mel, you're all tied in knots. You know it's a game. You want the cheat codes. No, the code itself. Don't just learn the rules, learn how to write them.

+

Matt's gun lies in its box in a fabric tote bag under his arm; Mello's is in a holster on his belt. A blast of air conditioning hits them as they walk into the range.

At the end of the front room, a tall bald man shows a woman and her two teenage daughters a wall of rifles. "Now this one's real lightweight, not too much kickback to it. Lots of women in the military like it..."

"This is like being in a movie," Matt says in a low voice. He notices a row of targets: thick posters hanging on the opposite wall. He grabs Mello's arm. "Oh my god. Mel. They have targets that look like zombie Nazis. I want to shoot a zombie Nazi."

"Hey," Mello says to the man at the counter. He sets down two boxes of bullets. "We want an hour and, uh, the zombie Nazis."

"You got it, man. You been here before, right?"

"Yeah."

"You got your ID?" The clerk looks at Matt. Matt produces his fake Croatian passport.

"Croatia," the clerk says. "Guess you guys don't shoot much over there."

"Not really a European thing," Matt says. He looks around the room while Mello pays.

The range is empty except for two other shooters at the far end. The room has a sharp, burning, chemical smell from the gunpowder. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. Mello clips up the targets and sends them back ten meters toward the back wall, along the wires that hold them up. Matt puts on his own goggles. He grabs a set for Mello and headphones for both of them. He has to lean in close to hear Mello explain how to load the guns.

"Do you think I'm really going to have to use this?" Matt asks. He tries to get used to the feeling of the weight in his hands.

"I don't fucking know. If you're serious about helping me, then maybe. Or think about this way. I don't want you to die, so it's in both of our best interest that you learn to shoot first."

"Ok...that I can live with I guess."

Mello fires six times. Matt watches his stance. It makes him feel uneasy, how naturally it seems to come to Mello.

Matt looks at the target. A cluster of three shots around the zombie's head, three in his chest.

"You're a good shot," Matt says.

"Don't look surprised, I've had practice. Your turn."

Matt flicks the safety off his gun and raises it. His body feels contracted and awkward. Mello gently tilts his shoulders. The feeling of Mello's hands on him is far superior to the feeling of cold metal in his hand, Matt thinks.

First shot. Just above the shoulder. Second shot. Just above the head. It feels strange. It doesn't feel like a game at all.

Mello lowers Matt's arm slightly with his hand.

You can be so delicate when you want to be, Matt thinks.

Third shot. Into the zombie's left abdomen.

"Better," Mello says. "Keep going."

A few that miss the target all together.

"Try not to flick your wrist when you shoot."

Matt clusters a few more near the zombie's head.

"Not bad for a first try," Mello says.

Matt releases the empty clip. "Nice to be able to shoot something without remorse," he says, looking at the target.

"You have too much remorse. It's just going to slow you down." Mello fires again. A cloud of holes around the creature's head.

"In all my games there are just infinite bad guys, you know. You can just shoot as much as you want. Kind of nice to pretend it doesn't matter."

Mello gives him a dry look. "Do you think we're doing the right thing?"

"Well...yes."

"Then anyone who is against you might as well be some faceless bad guy in a game. You don't have to go on a hunt. You just have to make sure they can't stop you."

Matt reloads his gun. "Would you kill someone if you had to?"

"Why else do you think I bought this?" He turns his gun so that it catches the light.

"Would you kill someone if you didn't have to?"

Mello squints. "I don't know. It depends on the situation."

Matt fires again. Too high at first. Too far to the left. Then in the center of the target's chest.

The smile that creeps onto Mello's face is both disturbing and gratifying.

They take turns. Eventually Mello sends the targets back another five meters. Then another five. When the posters look like bullet hole swiss cheese, they switch them out.

Matt watches Mello shoot. He looks serene, focused.

Mello. You've never told me outright that you've killed anyone. But I don't think you could ever have gotten Ross's men on your side unless you had. Even if it was indirect.

Are you a dangerous person, or aren't you? And what am I doing here with you anyways?

Mello looks around. Seeing that the other two shooters have gone, he wraps an arm around Matt's waist and sets his goggles on the ledge in front of them.

"I want to try something," he says. He aims at the target, then turns back to kiss Matt.

He fires right as his tongue pierces Matt's lips. The sudden noise and impact make Matt shiver. Mello kisses him harder and fires the rest of the round. When he draws back, Matt feels out of breath.

They turn to look at the target. The cluster is near the zombie's would-be heart.

If there is a hell, I am sure we are both going to it, Matt thinks.

+

The remnants of Chinese takeout lie in greasy paper boxes in the trashcan. Most of the damage was done by Matt.

The monitors stand in an awkward stack on the desk. In the bottom right corner, a slightly blurry figure unlocks the door to his vacation home. Two women who are neither his wife nor daughters follow him inside.

The air conditioning unit whirrs and groans in the window. Mello's vest lies draped over the back of the couch. The cold glow of the screens shines off of Mello's torso. Matt thinks for a moment of a porcelain figurine of a little shepherd, from the shelf of a high glass cabinet in the dining room at Wammy's. Mello is not the tan, glazed, mechanical body from so many videos saved to Matt's computer. There is something vaguely sick about him, something sinister, but it draws Matt in.

"Takimura, you sorry son of a bitch," Mello mutters.

Matt sits on the couch. "Do we have to watch this?"

"Right now? No," Mello says. He sinks into the couch next to Matt. "Sato and the others will get him when he leaves."

Nine screens flicker next to them, each showing various roads, rooms, and corridors, some in LA, some in Japan. A peon of Ross's rolls a joint in the hideout. In Tokyo, Sato opens the door to a garage where two trucks and a motorcycle wait.

"Most people are so fucking boring it hurts," Mello says.

"Is this why you're friends with drag queens?"

"Part of it." Mello turns to Matt.

Matt looks away.

"You like looking at me, don't you?"

Matt laughs. "I'm sure quite a few people like looking at you, but I have a feeling not all of them would admit it."

Mello's grin is predatory. "I like it when you look at me."

Matt feels paralyzed, unable to break Mello's gaze.

Mello leans closer and takes Matt's chin in his thumb and forefinger. He licks Matt's lips before he kisses him. Mello lays his hand on the center of Matt's chest and presses him back onto the couch.

Mello's not as heavy as he looks. For an instant, Matt finds it unsettling. There should be more weight on him, pinning him to the couch. But the feeling of it is still so pleasant.

Mello's kiss is decadent and slow. Matt follows the movements of Mello's tongue, a little surprised to be enjoyed this much. Mello unbuckles Matt's belt and slips his hand into his jeans. Matt tilts his head back and feels Mello's tongue on his neck, his hand on his cock. Mello slides his arm underneath the small of Matt's back and licks and kisses the exposed skin of Matt's torso, his striped shirt bunched up to his chest.

Matt hears his own heavy breathing against the silence of the room. Mello's hair tickles his exposed skin. Matt expects to feel Mello's tongue on his shaft. He doesn't expect Mello to pull his jeans down off his hips, or lick him lower. Mello licks the inside of Matt's thigh and presses the pad of his thumb against Matt's opening.

Matt shudders and draws back. He shuts his eyes. Mello stops, his breath warm on Matt's erection.

"I don't, uh...really want to...do that..." Language doesn't cooperate with Matt. He feels his face flush, his body stiff with embarrassment.

Mello brushes his hair out of his face and looks back up at Matt, not with the same hungry expression as before, but with a look of vague concern. "You have to tell me what you like." His voice is a low, breathy growl.

Matt tilts his head back and feels defeated. His voice creaks. "I don't even really know what I like...I'm not, uh...a professional like you, you know."

Mello creeps back up closer to him and kisses his neck again. Matt rests his face against Mello's hair.

"I've never, um..." Matt takes a deep breath, "been with another guy before, so..."

Mello whispers in Matt's ear. "Then why don't we improvise, and you can tell me what you like and what you don't."

Ok, Matt thinks. Can't argue with that.

But his thoughts are warped with confusion. He likes how forward and aggressive Mello is...and yet the thought of being penetrated by him makes him uneasy. Matt reaches for Mello's hips, still anxious. You move so much faster than I do, Matt thinks. I don't even know what to say.

Mello sits back up, straddling Matt, and pulls Matt's shirt off. He slithers out of his own pants. "Do something for me," he says. He gives his cock a few slow pumps. "If you want to." He hovers over Matt's face and touches his tip to Matt's lips.

Matt takes him into his mouth, holding his hips. Mello guides Matt's hands to start fingering him.

That's...interesting, Matt thinks, his throat tight with Mello's cock. He feels Mello's breath get shallower, his back stiffen. Who's controlling whom?

Mello pulls out of Matt's mouth and pushes himself back onto Matt's fingers, starting to fuck himself slowly on Matt's hands.

Matt feels another wave of nervousness; his chest feels like it's on fire. I wanted to fuck him so badly, he thinks, but I don't even know what to do.

"I'm going to be right back," Mello whispers.

+

Mello looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he washes his hands. His neck and chest are flushed bright red. Aiko always teased him about being pale.

"What trips most doms up is when they think their clients are predictable," she said. "And most of them are. But you get into trouble when you quit paying attention. You have to notice the details. Not everyone wants exactly the same thing."

So what do you want, Matt? Are you one of those lazy tops who just wants to feel wanted? Or are you like me, who likes some of everything? What's your deal?

Mello runs his fingers through his hair.

But Matt's not a fucking client. Aiko...you knew how to deal with clients. You never said anything about getting a partner. I never even saw you hang out with anyone but Rashad and Tyler. I never heard of anyone staying over at your apartment but me. Did you even know how to get someone who wasn't paying you? Did you ever even want anyone for yourself?

On a few occasions, she offered to peg him. Mello accepted only once, a few weeks before her disappearance. The only time he'd ever let anyone fuck him who he wasn't about to blackmail.

He thinks of Matt waiting on the couch in the living room. The bewildered, innocent look on his face made Mello ravenous. It was easy enough to tempt someone. It was something different all together to make someone intoxicated, enchanted. But then, Matt had also seemed so tentative, and full of dread.

Don't fuck it up, Mello thinks. Don't make it awkward.

But where is he going to go? Mello feels cruel, wondering how much Matt is willing to tolerate before he really does leave.

Matt opens the cracked door and Mello turns around, startled. They stand naked, looking at each other for a moment.

"Are you all right?" Matt asks.

Mello says nothing, just walks up to Matt and kisses him.

Matt slides his hands down Mello's back and grips his butt. The heat from Matt's body and the touch of his skin make Mello painfully hard, a dull ache rings through his body.

Mello steps back and looks Matt straight in the face. This is ridiculous, he thinks. You're the one who's supposed to be nervous, not me.

Mello grabs Matt's wrist and leads him into the bedroom. His face cracks into a smile. "Lie down," he says.

Matt obeys.

Mello plucks a condom and a bottle of lube from a drawer. He'd never used them on anyone but himself, and never intended to; he bought the condoms to keep his own toys clean. He figured he would pick up the hunt for partners once he was done with the hunt for Kira. Other people were too messy, too time-consuming, too stupid.

He gives Matt a few long, slow, sloppy strokes with his tongue before he before he rolls the condom onto him. It feels good to feel Matt flinch and writhe underneath him. Mello realizes he needs Matt's nervousness to mask out his own.

So...how do you need to feel? Controlled? Owned? Used? Devoured? What is it going to take to drive you crazy?

"Come here," Matt whispers.

Mello stops for a second and smiles. He slicks a handful of lube onto Matt's shaft, then lets Matt pull him closer. Mello's hair hangs over their faces, blocking out the light.

"You have to tell me if you don't like something, ok?" Mello says.

"Yeah."

"And I want you to tell me if you do like something. I want to know what you like."

Matt's eyelashes graze Mello's cheek. "Kiss me again," Matt says, out of breath.

Mello lets his lips brush against Matt's first. He feels Matt gasp as he works himself slowly onto Matt's cock. He has to remind himself to relax.

Matt grips Mello's waist and sucks on his tongue. He pushes himself deeper into Mello.

Good. I knew you wouldn't be one to just lie there like a slug, Mello thinks.

Mello told himself It didn't matter if it hurt, or if he felt disgusted after his early encounters with clients, before Aiko took him under her wing. He would be in control no matter what. Make the other man want him, and make him pay. The more boisterous and entitled they were, the more Mello knew it would hurt them to see their bank balances at zero the next day. The furious reactions of wives and girlfriends. The images retrieved from the cameras Mello planted in hotel rooms, with his own face obscured and the client's clear as day. Fine, hurt me. You think you can throw me around like a doll? I'll hurt you worse. You're not better than me. You think you're getting what you want. But I'm going to get what I want, too.

The iron bed frame creaks as Matt thrusts into Mello. Mello lets Matt set the pace, lets himself be pulled onto Matt. His tip draws slick, jagged lines on Matt's belly.

"Hang on for a second." Mello sits up and watches Matt watching him. Matt looks as if he's beholding something wondrous. It makes Mello feel ferocious.

He smears another handful of lube onto his own cock and around his rim. He licks Matt from his pubic bone to the pit of his neck before he eases back onto Matt again.

Come on, show me. How bad do you want it? How bad do you want to fuck me, Matty? Give me a little more fire...

Mello grazes Matt's neck with his teeth. Matt lets out a little whine and squeezes Mello harder. That's more like it.

Mello's breathing gets heavier. Matt is not painfully thick, but it's been a while. And after years of mental gymnastics to keep Matt out of the filthy dungeon of his imagination, Mello is tired.

Matt doesn't seem to be. He has pretty good stamina for a guy our age, Mello thinks. Most guys would have shot off by now...

Mello arcs his back slightly and groans. That's the spot...

"Is that ok?"

The worry in Matt's voice is endearing. Mello forces himself not to laugh,

"Oh my god...yeah, that's..." Mello grits his teeth and grips Matt's shoulders. He sinks down onto Matt's chest and lets Matt pump him. "I'm getting close..."

"Uh...so am I," Matt says.

"It's ok, keep going, it feels good...ah..." Mello rests his forehead on Matt's collarbone.

Matt places one hand on the back of Mello's neck, the other on the small of his back. Mello notices Matt's hands trembling slightly. You're not used to being in control, and it makes you anxious, Mello thinks.

Control. Always in control. But it's impossible to come with a partner if you can't let go...

The most terrifying thing.

Matt...how many times did I get myself off in the shower, wishing my hand was your mouth? How many times did I finger myself in bed while you were snoring on the other side of the room, wishing my hands were yours? How many times did I watch you walk across the room and hope you didn't notice? How many gigabytes of porn did I download so I could think about someone else?

Mello kisses Matt's cheek. He arches his back, panting.

I had so much practice getting myself off on my own...can I add you to my toy box, Matt?

Mello's body goes rigid, tight around Matt's cock. He shudders and paints a thick, milky line onto Matt's abdomen.

Matt reaches for Mello's face and plunges his tongue into his mouth, kissing him hard.

Mello lets his body go limp. Matt pounds into him, faster. Come on, Matt. It's your turn. Let go, Mello thinks.

Matt tilts his head back and groans. He clutches Mello hard to his chest as he comes.

Silence. Breathing. Their skin is slick with lube and Mello's semen. Matt's quivering hand lights on the back of Mello's head and goes still.

They need to check the monitors. They need a shower. Mello wants a cigarette.

But first, oblivion.


End file.
